A Random Strawman

[Carter Schonwald]

Well said,  a lot of the tools that depend on a good quality RNG have
migrated to tf random and friends.  So a thoughtful time scale is very much
the way to go

On Mon, Apr 6, 2015, 4:50 PM Edward Kmett <ekmett at gmail.com> wrote:

> If we're going to switch out algorithms completely then a first digit
> major version bump seems entirely warranted.
>
> Pulling in tf-random's code entirely is definitely one way to move
> forward, and it has the benefit of being a relatively simple migration.
>
> As for tf-random vs. trying out a port of Guy Steele's work to Haskell.
>
> That is more a question of time and available engineering effort.
>
> Do we take the short term win or look to see how much further performance
> we could eke out by going down Guy's path?
>
> Given that tf-random is already there and working, I'd be inclined to take
> the longer path forward.
>
> -Edward
>
>
> On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 1:57 PM, Dominic Steinitz <dominic at steinitz.org>
> wrote:
>
>> Hello All,
>>
>> Having skimmed the literature, run some tests and benchmarks:
>>
>>
>>    - The current System.Random is broken: https://github.com/haskell/
>>    random/issues/25#issuecomment-87423142
>>    <https://github.com/haskell/random/issues/25#issuecomment-87423142>.
>>    Furthermore, this is recorded in at least two published papers:
>>    http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2660195
>>    <http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2660195> and
>>    http://publications.lib.chalmers.se/records/fulltext/
>>    183348/local_183348.pdf
>>    <http://publications.lib.chalmers.se/records/fulltext/183348/local_183348.pdf>
>>    .
>>    - The tf-random package does not have this breakage and is based on
>>    good theoretical foundations.
>>    - In my tests tf-random performs better than System.Random.
>>
>>
>> As a result of which, I am very much inclined to suggest we replace the
>> code in System.Random with tf-random. Before doing any more work on this,
>> I’d like to understand what the next steps should be.
>>
>>
>>    - How much review should be carried out? I have no reason to doubt
>>    the implementors have done a great job but should someone (who?) review the
>>    code more formally. If so what would the process / tools be?
>>    - Tests in packages / applications may now fail as the (pseudo)
>>    random numbers will be different with this change. What should we do here?
>>    Alert folks (who and how?) that the may have to rebase their tests? Tell
>>    folks that 1.1 is deprecated and they should move to 2.0 (I think it’s
>>    right to indicate this is a completely new version)?
>>    - Are there any other steps?
>>
>>
>> FYI: I did look at Guy Steele et al. but I don’t believe there is
>> currently a Haskell implementation of it, probably ruling it out as
>> possible solution in the medium term.
>>
>> Dominic Steinitz
>> dominic at steinitz.org
>> http://idontgetoutmuch.wordpress.com
>>
>>
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