[R] random seed puzzle

[Liaw, Andy]

My guess is that
http://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Descriptions/rlecuyer.html might be
relevant, too.

Cheers,
Andy

> From: Duncan Murdoch
> 
> On Mon, 2 Aug 2004 17:50:44 -0500, "Bickel, David"
> <DAVID.BICKEL at PIONEER.COM> wrote:
> 
> >After reading the help page on set.seed, I am unsure about 
> how to solve the following problem. I need to call function f 
> a thousand times. The list of values returned by f, should be 
> as random as possible. f calls g twice:
> >	f <- function(){g1 <- g(1); g2 <- g(2); c(g1; g2)}
> >The function g in turn calls sample and returns a number, 
> but also depends on its argument, so, starting from the same 
> seed, g(1) returns a different number than g(2). I need each 
> call to g to start with the same random number seed, so that 
> the values returned by f would not be affected by redefining 
> it this way:
> >	f <- function(){g2 <- g(2); g1 <- g(1); c(g1; g2)}
> 
> This is a problem that's like what people doing simulations on
> parallel computers worry about.  You might want to look at the sprng
> package.  (I haven't used it, so I'm not sure it does what you need). 
> 
> Duncan Murdoch
> 
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