From: Harry Ohlsen <harryo@...>
Date: 2003-07-31T05:59:10+09:00
Subject: Re: Generating random numbers?

On Thu, 31 Jul 2003 06:28, Josef 'Jupp' Schugt wrote:
> Saluton!
>
> * Harry Ohlsen; 2003-07-28, 21:35 UTC:
> > Can someone remind me of the name for the class/method for
> > generating random numbers?
>
> Nobody did ask this so far: What kind of random numbers do you need
> and for what purpose.

That's a good question.  I'm no statistics guru, so I probably don't really 
know :-).

However, I'm guessing that uniformly distributed is probably fine, which I 
think is what rand() tries to generate.

What I'm using them for is to try to find a generator in Z_n. I plan to do 
some experimentation to see whether doing it that way (there's a little more 
to the approach, but it's basically random) compared to using brute force 
(ie, checking the order of 2, 3, ... until we find one that's phi(n)).

> Ruby's RNG may be nice for Monte Carlo simulations (because it has a
> very large period) but it is NOT SECURE for CRYPTOGRAPHY as it is.

Thanks.  It might be good for my experiment.  I'll take a look.

Harry O.