Re: The two dices
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg54553] Re: The two dices
- From: Bill Rowe <readnewsciv at earthlink.net>
- Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2005 04:25:56 -0500 (EST)
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
On 2/21/05 at 3:44 AM, bugaboo12703 at yahoo.fr (Antoine) wrote:
>I wanted to simulate the throws of two dices and something happened
>I can't explain: (Mathematica 5.0 , the same occurs on Mathematica
>5.1 )
>The following code is OK:
>n=300;
>theThrows = Table[Random[Integer, {1, 6}]+Random[Integer,{1, 6}], {n}];
>theStats = Table[Count[theThrows, i], {i, 2, 12}]
>the occurences, as n becomes greater and greater, looks like the
>Gaussian curve (sorry for my English)
>Suppose you want your dice function, and that it is defined by
>dice[]:=Random[Integer, {1, 6}] ( nothing wrong about it, I
>suppose )
>Now the behavior of the following code changes depending on the
>value of n. If n < 250 everything is fine ... hen n >= 250, then
>there is no occurence of odd values. ( the two dices never give 3,
>5, ....)
>n=250;
>theThrows = Table[dice[] + dice[], {n}];
>theStats =Table[Count[theThrows, i], {i, 2, 12}]
>Does a rationnal explanation exists ? Is it a bug ?
I believe this is a bug and is related to a issue with packed arrays and random number generation which has been previously discussed here since
In[43]:=
<< "Developer`"
In[55]:=
testDice[n_] := Module[
{theThrows = Table[dice[] + dice[], {n}]},
{Count[theThrows, 5], PackedArrayQ[theThrows]}]
In[56]:=
testDice[249]
Out[56]=
{23, False}
In[57]:=
testDice[250]
Out[57]=
{0, True}
But this does bring up another issue.
As far as I know, Wolfram does not publish a list of known bugs. That makes it impossible for any user to determine whether a given bug has been reported or not. It probably isn't useful and certaintly is not efficient for everyone to report the same bug.
So, what is the best course of action here? Report this as a bug? Or simply assume it is something already reported?
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