From: Belorion <belorion@...>
Date: 2005-07-16T04:29:41+09:00
Subject: Re: [QUIZ] Sampling (#39)

On 7/15/05, Cassio Pennachin <pennachin@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Shouldn't those number be more like
> >
> >   999999xxx
> 
> As far as I know, they just have to be between 0 and LIMIT-1.  In
> fact, if the tail end of the sample is heavily concentrated as you
> suggest, it's probably a badly biased sample.  Unfortunately, my
> sampler is biased as well, just not in this particular way.
> 
> It's not hard to remove the bias, but then the script would be 50-60%
> slower, which makes it significantly less useful for taunting others
> ;-).
> 
> Cassio
> --
> Cassio Pennachin

I think Jim's point was that if your last digit is 462470382 then you
don't have a random sample... which is specified as a criteria for the
quiz.  Even if you don't have a lot of Otherwise one could just do

SAMPLE_SIZE.times{ |ii| print ii }

And be done with it.  Clearly if all of your members are under
462470382  then you haven't truly "sampled" the population of
1_000_000_000.