[Rd] Seed in 'parallel' vignette

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> Marius Hofert <marius.hofert at uwaterloo.ca>
>>>>>     on Sun, 8 Mar 2015 11:19:45 -0400 writes:

    > On Tue, Feb 3, 2015 at 10:39 AM, Marius Hofert
    > <marius.hofert at uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
    >> Hi,
    >> 
    >> This is most likely only a minor technicality, but I saw the
    >> following: On page 6 of the 'parallel' vignette
    >> (http://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-devel/library/parallel/doc/parallel.pdf),
    >> the random-number generator "L'Ecuyer-CMRG" is said to have seed
    >> "(x_n, x_{n-1}, x_{n-2}, y_n, y_{n-1}, y_{n-2})". However, in L'Ecuyer
    >> et al. (2002), the seed is given with 'increasing' indices, so should
    >> rather be "(x_{n-2}, x_{n-1}, x_n, y_{n-2}, y_{n-1}, y_n)" (or, even
    >> more intuitively, "(x_{n-3}, x_{n-2}, x_{n-1}, y_{n-3}, y_{n-2},
    >> y_{n-1})"). The question is how it's done in R (?):

    > ... in the meanwhile, I found out that this is indeed a typo in the
    > vignette. I suggest to change it to "(x_{n-3}, x_{n-2}, x_{n-1},
    > y_{n-3}, y_{n-2}, y_{n-1})" on page 6 in the version of October 31, 2014.

Thank you, Marius.
I've committed this change now.

With regards: Martin

    >> If as given in the
    >> vignette, one should maybe point this out as other (languages)
    >> following L'Ecuyer et al. (2002) might obtain different random numbers
    >> then. And if it's implemented as in L'Ecuyer, then one probably wants
    >> to adjust the vignette to reflect this.
    >> 
    >> Other minor suggestions to improve the vignette (if that's what's also
    >> done in R; I couldn't easily figure that out from ./src/main/RNG.c):
    >> 1) when defining u_n, I would write u_n = z_n / (2^32-208) [as it is
    >> immediately clear then that one divides by the modulus of the first
    >> linear congruential generator + 1]
    >> 2) The case z_n=0 is not provided (for a reason?). If z_n=0, L'Ecuyer
    >> suggests to set u_n to "(2^32-209)/(2^32-208)".
    >> 
    >> Cheers,
    >> Marius
    >> 
    >> 
    >> 
    >> 
    >> --
    >> Marius Hofert, Dr. rer. nat.
    >> Assistant Professor
    >> Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science
    >> Faculty of Mathematics
    >> University of Waterloo
    >> 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1
    >> +1-519-888-4567, ext. 31394 (office M3 4207)
    >> http://math.uwaterloo.ca/~mhofert



    > -- 
    > Marius Hofert, Dr. rer. nat.
    > Assistant Professor
    > Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science
    > Faculty of Mathematics
    > University of Waterloo
    > 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1
    > +1-519-888-4567, ext. 31394 (office M3 4207)
    > http://math.uwaterloo.ca/~mhofert

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