experiment

Experiments, Sample Code, and Other Misc

This directory contains source code of experiments with the library, sample code, and other misc items, as follows.

Experiments with the Ziggurat Library and Java 17

The code in the directory timing17 can be used to reproduce the experiments of the following paper, which among other things explores the relevance of the library for Java 17+:

Vincent A. Cicirello. 2024. Fast Gaussian Distributed Pseudorandom Number Generation in Java via the Ziggurat Algorithm. arXiv:2405.19493, May 2024. doi:10.48550/arXiv.2405.19493. [PDF]

Which Gaussian Algorithm Does Java Use

The code in the directory properties extracts a list of all of the random number generators for Java 17, and determines what implementation of nextGaussian each uses. Classes that inherit the default in Java 17 use a modified ziggurat, which is faster than the original ziggurat algorithm. The Random class, and the classes that extend it override the default with the slow polar method. Those are cases where our implementation of the original ziggurat algorithm is still relevant for Java 17+ applications.