Random number generators

[Sven Thommesen]

Manor,

one specific and two general questions:

a) I note that Heatbug makes a call to [uniformRandom <parameters>]. I'd 
guess uniformRandom is an object of type Uniform - but where is it 
defined?

b) Would it not be better if random number generators were NOT 
automatically provided? Having to explicitly create them, and provide the 
starting seeds, would make it more obvious that there are issues here 
that the programmer needs to consider. 

Certainly, for purposes of model replication, the value of starting seeds 
needs to be stated explicitly -- allowing Swarm to use its ("randomly" 
chosen) default seed won't do! 

Also, it is probably not a good idea to use a single random number stream 
to feed all 'users' of random numbers in a given application. 
Conceptually independent events ought to be fed by different random 
number streams, no?

c) Has anyone written the code to provide generators other than Uniform?

--Sven