[R] Randomness

[Thomas Lumley]

On Tue, 27 May 2003 dcum007 at ec.auckland.ac.nz wrote:

> Hi,
> I am very new to R and cannot seem to find how it generates random numbers. I
> am currently involved with a project that requires a random number generator
> and have developed one. I am, however, unsure of just how random it is and was
> wanting to compare my generator with that of R (as well as others).

The one addition I would make to Brian Ripley's reply is that R does not
generate cryptographically secure random numbers.  If your project needs
random encryption keys or nonces or whatever, you should read something
from the computer security literature. In this situation the arguments
against making up your own generator are even stronger.


	-thomas