[R] Random real numbers
Carl Witthoft
carl at witthoft.com
Wed Mar 3 00:00:01 CET 2010
Well, to be mathematically correct, you cannot choose random real
numbers for the simple reason that we don't even have names for all the
reals.
As all of you know (I hope :-) ), there are the same number (aleph-1) of
reals in any length line segment you wish. Aside from the unlikelihood
that you could write a random number generator that produced, say,
(3.14159^5.432- .3289^3.19847)^(0.274) , there are a whole pile of
transcendentals that you'll never get.
So as always, settle for a random rational number amongst the 2^N values
your floating point processor can actually produce.
Carl
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