On 2012-03-01 16:34:23 +0000, Ali Çehreli said:
Since there are also sub-normal values between 0 and T.min_normal, it may make sense to use the range [T.min_normal, 1) and scale the result from there. But I haven't tested whether the distinct values in that range are equally distributed.
I get similar results now that I did when I started with the range from -1 to 1, but I'm guessing it's my brain that's a little slow. I was perplexed that (for float) almost all the numbers had an exponent of 38, while only a few had 37, and none had anything else (in my limited tests).
Buuuut that's just the problem with (at least my) "common sense" and exponentials/logarithms. There are, of course, ten times as many numbers with an exponent of 38 as there are with an exponent of 37 (and so on, down the line; c.f., the incompressibility lemma etc.).
For testing, I might want some small numbers, too -- perhaps I should just generate the mantissa and exponent separately (maybe even throwing in some NaNs and Infs etc.) :)
Thanks for your help, though. -- Magnus Lie Hetland http://hetland.org
