Commit b21dac1e authored by Raymond Hettinger's avatar Raymond Hettinger

Remove outdated reference to Wichmann-Hill algorithm.

parent 05156613
......@@ -8,9 +8,10 @@
This module implements pseudo-random number generators for various
distributions.
For integers, uniform selection from a range. For sequences, uniform selection
of a random element, a function to generate a random permutation of a list
in-place, and a function for random sampling without replacement.
For integers, there is uniform selection from a range. For sequences, there is
uniform selection of a random element, a function to generate a random
permutation of a list in-place, and a function for random sampling without
replacement.
On the real line, there are functions to compute uniform, normal (Gaussian),
lognormal, negative exponential, gamma, and beta distributions. For generating
......@@ -35,15 +36,6 @@ basic generator of your own devising: in that case, override the :meth:`random`,
Optionally, a new generator can supply a :meth:`getrandbits` method --- this
allows :meth:`randrange` to produce selections over an arbitrarily large range.
As an example of subclassing, the :mod:`random` module provides the
:class:`WichmannHill` class that implements an alternative generator in pure
Python. The class provides a backward compatible way to reproduce results from
earlier versions of Python, which used the Wichmann-Hill algorithm as the core
generator. Note that this Wichmann-Hill generator can no longer be recommended:
its period is too short by contemporary standards, and the sequence generated is
known to fail some stringent randomness tests. See the references below for a
recent variant that repairs these flaws.
The :mod:`random` module also provides the :class:`SystemRandom` class which
uses the system function :func:`os.urandom` to generate random numbers
from sources provided by the operating system.
......
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