From: Steven Jenkins <steven.jenkins@...>
Date: 2007-06-13T22:59:42+09:00
Subject: Re: comments needed for Random class

gga wrote:
> Different distributions like random, uniform, etc. are excellent ideas
> too.  This is a standard naming conventions used in math (and pretty
> common, for example, in the 3d industry, when you create a renderer).

I urge caution. Generation of random variates requires considerable 
expertise. One size does not fit all.

The GNU Scientific Library has an extensive set of distributions, and 
there are Ruby bindings for it. There may be others as well. Rather than 
duplicate their work, my recommendation would be to limit Random to the 
uniform distribution and convenience functions on it.

> http://www.gnu.org/software/gsl/manual/html_node/Random-Number-Distributions.html

Steve