Random Number Generator

DragonGuy

New Member
Joined
Mar 27, 2002
Messages
3
Whats the best and fast way to generate a truely random numbers about say 250 million numbers to test my probability of an occurance happening? And I guess more specifically how good is EXCEL random number generator at producing truely random numbers? Thanks again for all the feedback I recieved from my last question.
 

Excel Facts

Back into an answer in Excel
Use Data, What-If Analysis, Goal Seek to find the correct input cell value to reach a desired result
Random numbers generated by a computer are not random. They are produced by an algorithm, which usually transforms a seed into a pseudo-random number, and another seed.

Excel's random number generator is:

sn+1 = (9821 sn + 211327) mod 1,000,000
xn+1 = sn+1/1,000,000

The best way to generate a random number is with a hardware random number generator. This is a piece of electronics that plugs into a computer and produces genuine random numbers as opposed to the pseudo-random numbers that are produced by a computer program. The usual method is to amplify noise generated by a resistor or a semi-conductor diode and feed this to a comparator or Schmitt trigger. If you sample the output you get a series of bits which are statistically independent. These can be assembled into bytes, integers or floating point numbers and then, into random numbers from other distributions.
_________________
Hope this helps.
Kind regards, Al.
This message was edited by Al Chara on 2002-04-02 07:29
 
Upvote 0

Forum statistics

Threads
1,213,533
Messages
6,114,179
Members
448,554
Latest member
Gleisner2

We've detected that you are using an adblocker.

We have a great community of people providing Excel help here, but the hosting costs are enormous. You can help keep this site running by allowing ads on MrExcel.com.
Allow Ads at MrExcel

Which adblocker are you using?

Disable AdBlock

Follow these easy steps to disable AdBlock

1)Click on the icon in the browser’s toolbar.
2)Click on the icon in the browser’s toolbar.
2)Click on the "Pause on this site" option.
Go back

Disable AdBlock Plus

Follow these easy steps to disable AdBlock Plus

1)Click on the icon in the browser’s toolbar.
2)Click on the toggle to disable it for "mrexcel.com".
Go back

Disable uBlock Origin

Follow these easy steps to disable uBlock Origin

1)Click on the icon in the browser’s toolbar.
2)Click on the "Power" button.
3)Click on the "Refresh" button.
Go back

Disable uBlock

Follow these easy steps to disable uBlock

1)Click on the icon in the browser’s toolbar.
2)Click on the "Power" button.
3)Click on the "Refresh" button.
Go back
Back
Top