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Taco et al, I think I've found a way. Anthony Phan has written a brilliant stats package for Metapost. http://www-math.univ-poitiers.fr/~phan/statsmac.html I think (haven't tried yet) I can select a number at random from the uniform distribution on [0,1], then use one of Anthony's functions such as: poissonicdf(expr p, lambda). Inverse cumulative distribution function of P(lambda). See Anthony's manual at: http://www-math.univ-poitiers.fr/~phan/downloads/metapost/statsman.pdf David. On Dec 31, 2009, at 5:13 AM, Taco Hoekwater wrote:
David Arnold wrote:
Hi, Does anyone have any strategies for drawing random numbers from various statistics distributions in Metapost? For example, say, drawing 100 random numbers from a beta distribution?
Assuming you are using mkiv: create a lua function and use its calculated results to create the metapost code. Metapost only knows about uniformdeviate and normaldeviate, and metapost is not a good language to program mathematics in.
Best wishes, Taco ___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!
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