Gilles created MATH-1314:
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Summary: RNG: Warn users about "seeding"
Key: MATH-1314
URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MATH-1314
Project: Commons Math
Issue Type: Wish
Reporter: Gilles
Fix For: 4.0
The "package-info.java" file of {{o.a.c.m.random}} does not mention the problem
of seeding.
Many users of CM could not be aware that it is not sufficient to "randomly"
choose a seed in order to ensure a random sequence.
I think that this is what is illustrated by random failures of some unit tests
(when the seed is "randomly" selected).
Do the intricate initialization procedures provided in some implementations
(WELL family and ISAAC) ensure that all seeds are good enough?
Should we provide some tool to test a seed?
By the way, the WELL performances listed on [this
table|http://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-math/javadocs/api-3.6/org/apache/commons/math3/random/package-summary.html]
do not correspond to the results obtained on my machine with our
{{PerfTestUtils}} benchmark: the {{MersenneTwister}} is invariably faster than
all WELL implementations.
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