Re: Generating Random Numbers with Normal Distribution

Wow... You clearly put a lot of thought into randomization... I am impressed..LOL Personally, most of my web applications do not have to factor 13.7 billion years of space drift in to the calculations, so php's rand function has been great for me... ;) -- Stephen Johnson c | eh The Lone Coder http://www.thelonecoder.com continuing the struggle against bad code http://www.thumbnailresume.com -- > From: Robert Cummings <robert@interjinn.com> > Organization: InterJinn > Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:46:47 -0500 > To: Stephen Johnson <maillists@thelonecoder.com> > Cc: AmirBehzad Eslami <behzad.eslami@gmail.com>, PHP General list > <php-general@lists.php.net> > Subject: Re: [PHP] Generating Random Numbers with Normal Distribution > > > Can you say for certain nature is truly random? Just because the seed > may have occurred 13.7 billion years ago and we don't know what that > initial state was and we couldn't possibly calculate all the > interactions since, doesn't mean that everything since hasn't been > happening in accordance with some universal formula and in absence of > randomness. We know that there appear to be certain laws in physics, > would they not have applied to that initial state in a non random > manner? It may just be that due to the hugantic sample space from which > to draw arbitrary values that we think things are random. > > Food for thought :)