Re: st: Poisson Number Generation

["E. Paul Wileyto" <epw@mail.med.upenn.edu>]

I don't think there is any way other than by brute force.  Generate the 
uniform random number, and then go through the cumulative distribution 
of Poisson counts with a lot of comparisons.  You will need to pick a 
place to stop (largest count possible) or you could just keep going.  
Logical functions will be more efficient than if/thens.

Paul

Martin Weiss wrote:

> Dear Statalisters,
>
> to pick up the recent discussion of random number generation in Stata, how
> would one go about generating poisson random numbers without calling any
> external programs? I am certainly not as adept as others on the list
> inverting cumulative distribution functions, so I would appreciate any
> suggestions...
>
>
> Martin Weiss
>
>
>
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--
E. Paul Wileyto, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Biostatistics
Tobacco Use Research Center
School of Medicine, U. of Pennsylvania
3535 Market Street, Suite 4100
Philadelphia, PA  19104-3309

215-746-7147
Fax: 215-746-7140
epw@mail.med.upenn.edu
http://mail.med.upenn.edu/~epw/ 
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