From: Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@...>
Date: 2008-08-18T07:07:31+09:00
Subject: Re: Generating Normally Distributed Random Numbers?

Michael Craig wrote:
> Does anybody know of a good method in Ruby to generate normally distributed
> random numbers? The application I have in mind at the moment is trivial, but
> I can think of a number of statistics-oriented applications.

Sounds like you got plenty of answers already, but here's one more (also 
includes log normal and exponential):

http://redshift.sourceforge.net/sci/

Example:

require 'sci/random'

seq = Random::Normal.new(
   # :generator => MyGenerator

   # above is optional, if you want it to work with a generator
   # other than ruby's built in one. MyGenerator must support
   # MyGenerator.new(seed) and #next()

   :mean => 10,
   :stdev => 2,
   :seed => 8732548
)

p seq.next
p seq.next
p seq.next

-- 
       vjoel : Joel VanderWerf : path berkeley edu : 510 665 3407