Comments on: Too Random

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 15:56:00 +0000

Jack -

Copy the range, then go to Edit menu > Paste Special > Values.

By: Jack

Jack — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 20:24:00 +0000

OK, having generated a set of random numbers (20r x 36c), how do I lock those numbers in? Everytime I do something to the worksheet the list of numbers changes!!

By: Mike Alexander

Mike Alexander — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 20:02:00 +0000

Mpemba,
You wrote "W**!!" like it represents a bad word.
Just curious what the heck that represents. As the ugly american, I understand
"F**!!" , "S**!!" , "A**!!". I can't imagine what W**!! means. Wanker?

By: Doug Jenkins

Doug Jenkins — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 10:13:00 +0000

Regarding the performance of XL 2007, it’s slow. About half the speed of 2003 in general, much slower than that for some things. I don’t know whether it has anything to do with the analysis toolpack functions, but I hope they fix it soon.

By: Mpemba

Mpemba — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 09:53:00 +0000

1) One way of making the "Multiple F9 pressing" give better (more random) random numbers would be to time the intervals between the presses (is there an F9 event?) and use that in someway as the seed for the final randomisation step.

2) Re performance of the Analysis Toolpack. In Excel 2002 some debug.print statements had been left active by the developers. These were easy enough to turn off once you knew the W**!! password and did speed things up. Have they fixed that now?

By: Jason B

Jason B — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 15:28:00 +0000

I’ve commented about random numbers on this blog before, so here’s another.

The comment above that recalculating the sheet doesn’t make RAND() any more random is correct. I think shuffling the cards or rolling the dice does make it more random, as there is some physical aspect to creating the result.

Random numbers are too important to be left to chance. That’s an axim often used in the practice of computer simulations. I do some of this at work, and coworkers of mine still get skittish thinking about Excel’s RAND() function. I pretty much only use it to generate a bogus set of data when needed for display purposes.

Someone mentioned basing a random number generator off of the clock. This has been shown to be one of the poorest ways to generate a stream of random numbers. Don’t do this in your coding projects.

Also, I like jkpieterse’s comment: no matter how good the generator is, the operator can always game the result!

Jason

By: MikeD

MikeD — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 21:32:00 +0000

Half of that story is true. I saw it on the Discovery Channel. But you are missing a few key details. The "bright individual" was a techinical expert of the Nevada Gaming Control Board and defeated the algorithem because he had access to code.

He did spend time jail, because he did cheat.

By: Jim Thomlinson

Jim Thomlinson — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 22:01:00 +0000

Here is an odd story that was told to me so as to whether it is true or not… but it makes a good story none the less. In the Bars and such there is a betting game you can play called Keno. It works similar to a lottery. It too used a computer random number generator. One particularily bright individual knowing the computers can not really generate random numbers figured out the algorythm being used and took his new found knowledge and use it to win the jackpot… twice… in a row… The makers of Keno who were on the hook for the rather hefty pay out sued the gentleman insisting that he cheated. The Judge sided with the winner noting that there is nothing illegal about beating someone at their own game. Keno changed the way they generate their “Random” numbers…

By: John Walkenbach

John Walkenbach — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 18:38:00 +0000

In Excel 2007, only the ATP functions are integrated into Excel. The ATP add-in is still required if you want to use any of the statistical procedures.

I usually keep ATP uninstalled because it's one less thing to clutter up the VB Editor window. I've never noticed any performance hit by having it installed.

By: Haffy

Haffy — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 17:23:00 +0000

Mike R,

Until now, the Toolpak wasn't installed by default on our PCs at work, so you could have problems sharing workbooks with people who didn't have it installed. In any case, although I found some functions to be useful, I could always find another way of doing it.

The performance impact was simple - the PC always went much slower. There may be another solution, but uninstalling did the job for me. Maybe I'll give it another shot and report back.

Then again, perhaps I shouldn't try to run Excel 2003 on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum?