If you're looking for truly random numbers, check out John Walker's Hotbits
resource at http://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/ . It generates random numbers
from a geiger counter measuring radioactive decay of a Krypton-85 source.
Nick Cox had a suggestion for implementing the output from the Hotbits data
which I haven't implemented yet. His suggestions is in the archives as:
Subject st: RE: text file as source for set seed # in uniform() fnc
Date Mon, 11 Aug 2003 19:55:37 +0100
John Wallace
Research Associate
Affymetrix, Inc
[email protected]
-----Original Message-----
From: J. Michael Oakes [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2003 10:02 AM
To: Statalist
Subject: st: RE: "random" seed for uniform()
Nick Cox wrote:
>
> -set seed- is documented under -help generate-
>
Thanks, I've studied it and the associated citations. I'm not interested in
wasting anyone's time. Instead I honestly don't see how the examples in the
manuals or help files answer my question. The closest (help file) example I
see is:
. set seed 1829382
. gen random = uniform()
. sort random
. local holdseed = c(seed)
. gen unif10 = floor(uniform()*10) + 1
. ... much later ...
. set seed `holdseed'
. gen same10 = floor(uniform()*10) + 1
And this does not appear to generate a "random" or an "always different"
seed. My read of the example is that it re-uses the seed saved in local
macro `holdseed'. As far as I can tell, c(seed) yields the value of seed
1829382. Am I missing something here too?
Regardless, I was simply hoping a Statalister could help me out.
- Michael Oakes
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