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set random numbers seed for different cpu's

3 messages · fantomas, R. Michael Weylandt

#
Hi

I'm running the same R script (throuth linux shell)  of several cpu's. This
R program uses random numbers and the result should be different every time.
But if put jobs (through Torque) for several cpu's I get the same result. As
a resealt my program saves numbers in file with randomly generated names.
works like a charm on one cpu, but I get the same result from different
cpu's.
So my question is, how can I resolve this? How to set pseudo random number
seed so that different cpu's would produce different results?

Thank you in advance.

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#
http://search.dilbert.com/comic/Random%20Number%20Generator

In all seriousness, you could set the seed differently on each machine
after putting jobs through Torque (i.e., as part of the batch script,
maybe using some piece of hardware id you can get through system()
somehow or other: possibly network id?) and you're very,very,very,very
likely to get different results.

Michael
On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 9:30 AM, fantomas <tomas.iesmantas at gmail.com> wrote:
#
Sorry -- that came off as very muddled.

What I meant to say:

To make it (almost) certain you will get different results on each
machine, you can reset the PRNG seed on each machine in some way
unique to that machine. What immediately came to mind was IP address,
which you can access with something like this:

x <- system("curl -s http://checkip.dyndns.org | sed 's/[a-zA-Z/<>
:]//g' ", intern = TRUE)
# Note you might have to tweak it for your OS

Michael

On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 3:31 PM, R. Michael Weylandt
<michael.weylandt at gmail.com> wrote: