Nick Wedd <nick@maproom.co.uk> wrote:
: Knuth's "Numerical recipes in C" explains what can be wrong with
: system-supplied rand() functions. He wrote it 20 years ago, and things
: must have improved since then; but I still wouldn't trust a
: system-supplied rand(). He gives code for improving a system rand(),
: also for replacing it by one known to be good. His code is in C of
: course, but is quite short and is easily translated into other
: languages.


Donald Knuth, The Art of Computer Programming : Seminumerical Algorithms
You must be talking about one of the books in this series by Knuth.

Numerical Recipes in C is old enough that it started out as Numerical
Recipes in Fortran. It was written by Press and Teukolsky [and others]

--thelma

: Nick