From: Raymond Hettinger Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2010 05:32:49 +0000 (+0000) Subject: Remove outdated reference to Wichmann-Hill algorithm. X-Git-Tag: v3.2a3~404 X-Git-Url: http://git.ipfire.org/gitweb.cgi?a=commitdiff_plain;h=b21dac1e38285f6f36905a294c2a3e8bceac2d89;p=thirdparty%2FPython%2Fcpython.git Remove outdated reference to Wichmann-Hill algorithm. --- diff --git a/Doc/library/random.rst b/Doc/library/random.rst index c690eeae191e..1e1668f4380f 100644 --- a/Doc/library/random.rst +++ b/Doc/library/random.rst @@ -8,9 +8,10 @@ This module implements pseudo-random number generators for various distributions. -For integers, uniform selection from a range. For sequences, uniform selection -of a random element, a function to generate a random permutation of a list -in-place, and a function for random sampling without replacement. +For integers, there is uniform selection from a range. For sequences, there is +uniform selection of a random element, a function to generate a random +permutation of a list in-place, and a function for random sampling without +replacement. On the real line, there are functions to compute uniform, normal (Gaussian), lognormal, negative exponential, gamma, and beta distributions. For generating @@ -35,15 +36,6 @@ basic generator of your own devising: in that case, override the :meth:`random`, Optionally, a new generator can supply a :meth:`getrandbits` method --- this allows :meth:`randrange` to produce selections over an arbitrarily large range. -As an example of subclassing, the :mod:`random` module provides the -:class:`WichmannHill` class that implements an alternative generator in pure -Python. The class provides a backward compatible way to reproduce results from -earlier versions of Python, which used the Wichmann-Hill algorithm as the core -generator. Note that this Wichmann-Hill generator can no longer be recommended: -its period is too short by contemporary standards, and the sequence generated is -known to fail some stringent randomness tests. See the references below for a -recent variant that repairs these flaws. - The :mod:`random` module also provides the :class:`SystemRandom` class which uses the system function :func:`os.urandom` to generate random numbers from sources provided by the operating system.