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Bias in R's random integers?

Duncan Murdoch
On 18/09/2018 5:46 PM, Carl Boettiger wrote:
I think the analyses are correct, but I doubt if a change to the default 
is likely to be accepted as it would make it more difficult to reproduce 
older results.

On the other hand, a contribution of a new function like sample() but 
not suffering from the bias would be good.  The normal way to make such 
a contribution is in a user contributed package.

By the way, R code illustrating the bias is probably not very hard to 
put together.  I believe the bias manifests itself in sample() producing 
values with two different probabilities (instead of all equal 
probabilities).  Those may differ by as much as one part in 2^32.  It's 
very difficult to detect a probability difference that small, but if you 
define the partition of values into the high probability values vs the 
low probability values, you can probably detect the difference in a 
feasible simulation.

Duncan Murdoch

Thread (35 messages)

Carl Boettiger Bias in R's random integers? Sep 18 Duncan Murdoch Bias in R's random integers? Sep 19 Iñaki Ucar Bias in R's random integers? Sep 19 David Hugh-Jones Bias in R's random integers? Sep 19 Ben Bolker Bias in R's random integers? Sep 19 Duncan Murdoch Bias in R's random integers? Sep 19 Philip B. Stark Bias in R's random integers? Sep 19 Duncan Murdoch Bias in R's random integers? Sep 19 Philip B. Stark Bias in R's random integers? Sep 19 Duncan Murdoch Bias in R's random integers? Sep 19 Philip B. Stark Bias in R's random integers? Sep 19 Duncan Murdoch Bias in R's random integers? Sep 19 Philip B. Stark Bias in R's random integers? Sep 19 Philip B. Stark Bias in R's random integers? Sep 19 Duncan Murdoch Bias in R's random integers? Sep 19 David Hugh-Jones Bias in R's random integers? Sep 19 Duncan Murdoch Bias in R's random integers? Sep 19 Ben Bolker Bias in R's random integers? Sep 19 Carl Boettiger Bias in R's random integers? Sep 19 Ralf Stubner Bias in R's random integers? Sep 20 Duncan Murdoch Bias in R's random integers? Sep 20 Paul Gilbert Bias in R's random integers? Sep 20 Gabriel Becker Bias in R's random integers? Sep 20 Hervé Pagès Bias in R's random integers? Sep 20 Steve Grubb Bias in R's random integers? Sep 20 Philip B. Stark Bias in R's random integers? Sep 20 Ralf Stubner Bias in R's random integers? Sep 21 Steve Grubb Bias in R's random integers? Sep 21 Dirk Eddelbuettel Bias in R's random integers? Sep 21 Dirk Eddelbuettel Bias in R's random integers? Sep 21 Luke Tierney Bias in R's random integers? Sep 21 Ralf Stubner Bias in R's random integers? Sep 21 Steve Grubb Bias in R's random integers? Sep 21 Steve Grubb Bias in R's random integers? Sep 21 Ralf Stubner Bias in R's random integers? Sep 27