From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mail1-relais-roc.national.inria.fr (mail1-relais-roc.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.82]) by walapai.inria.fr (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id p3UBXhpE026789 for ; Sat, 30 Apr 2011 13:33:43 +0200 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AkcDAFfzu01KfVI0imdsb2JhbACYUo0+CBQBAQEKCQ0HEgYhiHGfHIp8giqEKDSIXgEBAwaFegSOeYQZgQ6FEzuDLw X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.64,292,1301868000"; d="scan'208";a="107133389" Received: from mail-ww0-f52.google.com ([74.125.82.52]) by mail1-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr with ESMTP/TLS/RC4-MD5; 30 Apr 2011 13:33:38 +0200 Received: by wwe15 with SMTP id 15so5976814wwe.9 for ; Sat, 30 Apr 2011 04:33:38 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:message-id:date:from:user-agent:mime-version:to :subject:references:in-reply-to:content-type :content-transfer-encoding; bh=my1P4JI/CQwNexx3ktTQe2ntO3Rs5qyEiGP5CeHt6Cg=; b=rJx6OGHO+7ktYi1R7W31y89Zjh3rSImePiWMiYh3++w1Vb+xnL15N9TfCWx6hvHR2o ActKNVZ1cXyvhhi74BozZ637z3u8YqtxZ77/PDtU/S92qBAt7/leG9DVNr9xK8RcTY01 YQqZXnrBhDwZVf1k6OWQwTGAyk2wdqjrjCdKU= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=message-id:date:from:user-agent:mime-version:to:subject:references :in-reply-to:content-type:content-transfer-encoding; b=SoyvvpnVIsp6TsZnpA56GJhj3bYm65bIaZVUhTUxLs5IHFOivXgzx1cBP5S8Sf/iQi u6RBe1WYhGXNIiGeQgAUTXcWGDYGAByqV48HydzLA0ixLuejO6cuLc+bQPMZAzbA/1lV 4iYiyljCEC4cAqZmUFh775lsJdPN9xBQfSBXw= Received: by 10.227.131.208 with SMTP id y16mr1925618wbs.43.1304163217964; Sat, 30 Apr 2011 04:33:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [192.168.1.186] ([93.7.165.241]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id z13sm2222999wbd.12.2011.04.30.04.33.36 (version=SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Sat, 30 Apr 2011 04:33:37 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <4DBC0FAF.8030200@gmail.com> Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2011 15:33:35 +0200 From: Andrew User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; fr; rv:1.9.2.17) Gecko/20110414 Lightning/1.0b2 Thunderbird/3.1.10 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: caml-list@inria.fr References: <4DBBE676.8070101@univ-savoie.fr> <4DBBEF0B.2050204@univ-savoie.fr> <4DBBF1D8.6020105@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <4DBBF1D8.6020105@gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [Caml-list] portablility of random.mli in the stdlib > Why should a random generator give the same results over multiple > versions and architectures? > Starting from same seed is useful only for debugging. > In designing a game, you might find it convenient to use a given seed to encode a sequence of numbers (eg. level one is random seed 1524). Another field where that could be useful is statistics; being able to reproduce your results is absolutely crucial. Taking random values is fine, but you can' just say you obtained a result without telling others how to reproduce it. Andrew.