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Message-ID: <3ED791F2.4030503@stat.ucla.edu>
Date: 2003-05-30T17:16:34Z
From: Roger D. Peng
Subject: Normal deviate generation - Marsaglia's ziggurat method
In-Reply-To: <59e9155a222e.5a222e59e915@jhsph.edu>

Since it is available in the `SuppDists' package, why do we need it in 
the `base' package?  There are perhaps hundreds of useful functions that 
exist in external packages that are not in `base'.  My understanding was 
that one goal was to keep `base' from getting too bloated.

-roger


Ravi Varadhan wrote:

> Hi:
> 
> I was wondering why Marsaglia's new ziggurat method for generating 
> deviates from the standard normal distribution has not been implemented 
> in the R base package. I know that it is available in SuppDists 
> pacakage of Bob Wheeler, as "rziggurat". According my timing tests, it 
> is about 6 to 7 times faster (on a Pentium 2.4 MHz) machine than the 
> default Inversion method used in R base package. 
> 
> thanks,
> Ravi.
> 
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