10 Jun
2004
10 Jun
'04
1:58 p.m.
On Jun 10, 2004, at 3:37 PM, Simon Plouffe wrote:
I am conducting some tests with the built-in random number generator of Excel.
According to http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;86523 it iterates r -> fractional part of (9821 * r + 0.211327) starting with a seed of r=.5. That page claims that "This formula will provide up to 1 million different numbers," which doesn't seem to hold up to your only seeing 3037 distinct ones.
- It did pick up the number 1 , 2 times.
Hmm, so your sequence is not cyclic?! This is bizarre. Unless the "equals" function is somehow not very sensitive? If excel reports a=b, does it necessarily mean that a-b=0? --Michael Kleber kleber@brandeis.edu