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author | Raymond Hettinger <python@rcn.com> | 2010-09-07 05:32:49 (GMT) |
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committer | Raymond Hettinger <python@rcn.com> | 2010-09-07 05:32:49 (GMT) |
commit | b21dac1e38285f6f36905a294c2a3e8bceac2d89 (patch) | |
tree | 5ce2867145e593c193b0cc30f7538d244dab2928 /Doc | |
parent | 0515661314c4e5b9235e07b2c46b8f456c7fadc3 (diff) | |
download | cpython-b21dac1e38285f6f36905a294c2a3e8bceac2d89.zip cpython-b21dac1e38285f6f36905a294c2a3e8bceac2d89.tar.gz cpython-b21dac1e38285f6f36905a294c2a3e8bceac2d89.tar.bz2 |
Remove outdated reference to Wichmann-Hill algorithm.
Diffstat (limited to 'Doc')
-rw-r--r-- | Doc/library/random.rst | 16 |
1 files changed, 4 insertions, 12 deletions
diff --git a/Doc/library/random.rst b/Doc/library/random.rst index c690eea..1e1668f 100644 --- a/Doc/library/random.rst +++ b/Doc/library/random.rst @@ -8,9 +8,10 @@ This module implements pseudo-random number generators for various distributions. -For integers, uniform selection from a range. For sequences, uniform selection -of a random element, a function to generate a random permutation of a list -in-place, and a function for random sampling without replacement. +For integers, there is uniform selection from a range. For sequences, there is +uniform selection of a random element, a function to generate a random +permutation of a list in-place, and a function for random sampling without +replacement. On the real line, there are functions to compute uniform, normal (Gaussian), lognormal, negative exponential, gamma, and beta distributions. For generating @@ -35,15 +36,6 @@ basic generator of your own devising: in that case, override the :meth:`random`, Optionally, a new generator can supply a :meth:`getrandbits` method --- this allows :meth:`randrange` to produce selections over an arbitrarily large range. -As an example of subclassing, the :mod:`random` module provides the -:class:`WichmannHill` class that implements an alternative generator in pure -Python. The class provides a backward compatible way to reproduce results from -earlier versions of Python, which used the Wichmann-Hill algorithm as the core -generator. Note that this Wichmann-Hill generator can no longer be recommended: -its period is too short by contemporary standards, and the sequence generated is -known to fail some stringent randomness tests. See the references below for a -recent variant that repairs these flaws. - The :mod:`random` module also provides the :class:`SystemRandom` class which uses the system function :func:`os.urandom` to generate random numbers from sources provided by the operating system. |