Generating a set of random bits

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Article #403

#403

From: Bill Hart
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 22:46

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I have an application for which I need to generate a random 'vector' of 
bits of length N.  I have looked at stuff in Numerical Recipies for
generating a random sequence of bits, but it remains unclear whether
such a generator would be appropriate for generating a random
vector of bits.

I need/want to have the distribution of vectors remain 'random'.  Right
now I'm generating a random float in [0,1> and testing to see
if it is less than 0.5 or not.  This works, but I'm sure there is
a better way of doing this.

Any ideas or pointers?

--Bill

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From: whart@cs.ucsd.edu (Bill Hart)
Newsgroups: sci.math.stat
Subject: Generating a set of random bits
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Date: 18 Aug 92 22:46:06 GMT
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