Re: built in rv objects -- "bug" in documenation

[Rick Riolo]

Thanks to all for your comments, suggestions and volunteering.
Being in the middle of teaching swarm, I don't have time
right now to put the page or two together on intro to RNG,
but I would be glad to read and comment on anything anyone
else puts together.   Or I'd be glad to comment on an outline.
After this term I'd be glad to write it.

Just a quick suggestion if someone does do this now:
A user should be able to look at about 1 page to get
  a high-level explanation of 
  - where heatbugs gets its random numbers
  - what similar objects and constructs exist to get 
    different distributions (ie a couple of examples
     of sending messges to the other built-ins)
  - a few sentences about varyseed

Then the next N pages can be the gentle introduction
to the machinery below those, with examples on how to
set up one's own stack of rng's and distributions, etc.
I think much of what is needed is in some combination of
the FAQ and Sven's long writeup, it just needs to be extracted
and organized in a beginner friendly way.

- r

Rick Riolo                           address@hidden
Program for Study of Complex Systems (PSCS)
4477 Randall Lab                
University of Michigan         Ann Arbor MI 48109-1120
Phone: 734 763 3323                  Fax: 734 763 9267
http://www.pscs.umich.edu/PEOPLE/rlr-home.html

On Tue, 26 Jan 1999, Sven N. Thommesen wrote:

> Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 22:26:30 -0600
> From: Sven N. Thommesen <address@hidden>
> To: address@hidden
> Subject: Re: built in rv objects -- "bug" in documenation
> 
> 
> Okay, okay, guys, this is getting embarrassing ...
> 
> I agree that a gentle introduction to the use of the random objects ought
> to be there. The material that I wrote and included with the random library
> is, as Rick indicates, attempting to be complete rather than a pedagogical
> intro.
> 
> If Paul/Alex would like, I'll be happy to take a stab at the missing
> introduction for their User Guide.
> 
> Sven
> 
> At 07:57 PM 1/26/1999 -0700, you wrote:
> >>>>>> "RR" == Rick Riolo <address@hidden> writes:
> >
> >RR> Thanks to all for the answers...I must apologize for my ill-formed
> >RR> question.  I actually know about all this stuff and where it is.
> >RR> What I was asking was where, if anywhere, in the documentation is
> >RR> there one page, say, that tells the beginning user about these
> >RR> built in objects, and about --varyseed's effect on them?
> >
> >Rick,
> >
> >You are right that we do have no such page in the reference
> >documentation as it stands.  I can only say that it was never the
> >purpose of the reference guide.  It's purpose is to document (however
> >tersely, that may be sometimes), exactly the interfaces as they stand.
> >
> >RR> I bring this up because the ref manual, with its nice indicies and
> >RR> cross-references as made it *so much easier* to get beginners
> >RR> oriented and on their own.
> >
> >I think your suggestion, which is a good one, definitely belongs in
> >the User Guide that Paul Johnson and myself are writing in the
> >background (when we get a spare nanosecond to do so ;-))
> >
> >I'd be more than happy to include such a high-level outline for
> >beginners, in the User Guide if you could send me some text.  Or if
> >you take some to FAQ material and whip it into shape, that's also
> >fine.  I'm certainly happy to finesse the finer technical details, if
> >you're not completely certain on the exact syntax.
> >
> >Regards,
> >
> > --- Alex
> >
> >-- 
> >  Alex Lancaster           |  e-mail: address@hidden
> >  Swarm Program            |     web: http://www.santafe.edu/~alex
> >  Santa Fe Institute       |     tel: +1-(505) 984-8800 (ext 242)
> >-------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
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