Joseph Rushton Wakeling





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Hello all, Recently I realized that TestU01 had been packaged in the latest Ubuntu, so for fun, I thought I'd have a little play with it and see if I could set up something to trial Phobos' uniform random number generators. The (very, VERY) provisional results are here: https:// github.com/ WebDrake/ dtestu01 Note that these are not bindings in the conventional sense; I took a deliberate decision to expose as little of the library as possible, with the goal being only to expose those things necessary to pass Phobos RNGs into the test batteries. Of course, I will happily consider extending the bindings (or accepting patches to do so) if anyone has a need for it. It's not yet implemented as a dub package, but will be in the not-too-distant future. The point here is that TestU01 provides a state-of-the-art means to validate the statistical quality of pseudo-random number generators, i.e. the extent to which these deterministic algorithms effectively mimic randomness. These can be used to help ensure that Phobos implementations of RNG algorithms are up to scratch, and that the functionality we provide covers an appropriate range of algorithms quality-wise. I'll continue to work on this as and when time allows; the results will probably be sporadic, but I hope the current public work will be useful to someone in the meantime. Thanks & best wishes, -- Joe