RE: Random Numbers

["Prevette, Steven S" <Steven_S_Prevette@rl.gov>]

If you are really interested in operational definitions of "randomness" and
the latest in random number generation, I do suggest contacting any college
or university with a good statistics or operations research department.  My
thesis advisor at Naval Postgraduate School is now the Operations Research
department head, and he did put me in touch with a professor there currently
active in the field of random number generators.  I don't want to impose on
their good will by blanket giving out their emails, but if you have a
specific project you are working on and don't have a local university
contact I can put you in touch with them.

I think as with anything we have to look at what is "good enough".  If you
are an Operations Researcher running a Monte Carlo simulation with 100
random numbers per repetition and 1,000,000 repetitions, you have to look
very closely at how random your random numbers are.  If you are just making
a small scale demonstration, perhaps even the suspect "rand()" function in
Excel is good enough.


Steve Prevette
Occupational Safety and Health
Fluor Hanford, A Fluor Government Group Project
ASQ Certified Quality Engineer
steven_s_prevette@rl.gov
509-373-9371