Comments on: Random numbers: standard normal distribution in flash/as3

By: Chuck

Chuck — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 23:26:09 +0000

Ran across your article and found it quite interesting. But shouldn’t the lines…

cache = x * w; // Cache one of the outputs
return y * w; // and return the other.

read…

cache = x * x * w; // Cache one of the outputs
return y * y * w; // and return the other.

? the result of the standardNormal result is way out of the (0,1) bounds without the modification.

By: hristo

hristo — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 15:22:30 +0000

I’ll mail it to you in a bit – wouldn’t post it here, because it’s so not the most perfectly finished tool on earth you see.

By: oly

oly — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:40:51 +0000

Hi, is the histogram available? the fla file i mean. i think it’s an interesting tool, and a good way to test other functions

Good job btw

By: hristo

hristo — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:58:13 +0000

The code above is as3, but there is nothing in there that as2 can’t do, you just need to rewrite it a bit. The visualisation above is a histogram showing how the sample builds up (you see the n number is the number of observations in the sample).

If you have any trouble getting it to work, mail me.

By: Lahiru

Lahiru — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 08:54:23 +0000

Hi, hristro,

Really appreciate your work. Thank you for sharing your knowledge.
I abeginner in action script. I’m working on my university project and for that I need to visualize “normal distribution”. I found that the way you have shown is perfect.

What I want to know is can I use this in “action script 2 based flash movie? if cannot, then what modifications should I do? After downloading the .as file what should I do to create a flash movie, like the one you have put on this blog?

hope you will guide me.
thank you.

By: hristo

hristo — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 07:52:04 +0000

Hey. It should be working fine, I doublechecked the source.
You should know that standardNormal() is 2 to 3 times slower than Math.random(), but I doubt that’s your problem.

Mail me your sources and I’ll tell you what I think.

By: RGriffoGoes

RGriffoGoes — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 03:01:19 +0000

Just downloaded the source provided and when I try to use with my 2d random visualization the “standardNormal” reaches 15s timelimit and timeout.

Anything I’m doing wrong? Any specific setting needs to be set? using CS4.

Thanks