![Random[Integer, 2^30 - 1]/2.^30 + Random[Integer, 2^30 - 1]/2.^30](../HTMLFiles/Tricks_P-Z_106.gif){kind=small}
Random
On 5 May 2000 Daniel Lichtblau of Wolfram Research reported at
http://forums.wolfram.com/mathgroup/archive/2000/May/msg00088. html
that the numbers produced using to produce rando approximate machine numbers are not completely random. Further more at
http://forums.wolfram.com/mathgroup/archive/2004/May/msg00002. html
Andrzej Kozlowski reported that this is still a problem in Mathematica 5.0.
Daniel Lichtblau suggests that instead of using Random[] to generate random real machine numbers the following should be used. I believe this will give a random number between 1 and 2.
However, based on Daniel's explanation of the problem, I expect that the
following also works around the bug in Random, and runs twice as fast as the
solution above.
![N[Random[Real, {0, 1}, 17]]](../HTMLFiles/Tricks_P-Z_107.gif){kind=small}
In the above message Daniel Lichtblau also explained how one can make
necessary changes to some of the standard packages.
Created by Mathematica (May 16, 2004)