Taco et al, I think I've found a way. Anthony Phan has written a brilliant stats package for Metapost.
http://www-math.univ-poitiers.fr/~phan/statsmac.html I think (haven't tried yet) I can select a number at random from the uniform distribution on [0,1], then use one of Anthony's functions such as: poissonicdf(expr p, lambda). Inverse cumulative distribution function of P(lambda). See Anthony's manual at: http://www-math.univ-poitiers.fr/~phan/downloads/metapost/statsman.pdf David. On Dec 31, 2009, at 5:13 AM, Taco Hoekwater wrote: > David Arnold wrote: >> Hi, >> Does anyone have any strategies for drawing random numbers from >> various statistics distributions in Metapost? For example, say, >> drawing 100 random numbers from a beta distribution? > > Assuming you are using mkiv: create a lua function and use its > calculated results to create the metapost code. Metapost only knows > about uniformdeviate and normaldeviate, and metapost is not a good > language to program mathematics in. > > Best wishes, > Taco > ___________________________________________________________________________________ > If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the > Wiki! > > maillist : [email protected] / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context > webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net > archive : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ > wiki : http://contextgarden.net > ___________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist : [email protected] / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________
