November 25, 2015
Hello all,

Recently I realized that TestU01 had been packaged in the latest Ubuntu, so for fun, I thought I'd have a little play with it and see if I could set up something to trial Phobos' uniform random number generators.

The (very, VERY) provisional results are here:
https://github.com/WebDrake/dtestu01

Note that these are not bindings in the conventional sense; I took a deliberate decision to expose as little of the library as possible, with the goal being only to expose those things necessary to pass Phobos RNGs into the test batteries.  Of course, I will happily consider extending the bindings (or accepting patches to do so) if anyone has a need for it.  It's not yet implemented as a dub package, but will be in the not-too-distant future.

The point here is that TestU01 provides a state-of-the-art means to validate the statistical quality of pseudo-random number generators, i.e. the extent to which these deterministic algorithms effectively mimic randomness.  These can be used to help ensure that Phobos implementations of RNG algorithms are up to scratch, and that the functionality we provide covers an appropriate range of algorithms quality-wise.

I'll continue to work on this as and when time allows; the results will probably be sporadic, but I hope the current public work will be useful to someone in the meantime.

Thanks & best wishes,

    -- Joe
November 26, 2015
On Wednesday, 25 November 2015 at 23:48:48 UTC, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> Recently I realized that TestU01 had been packaged in the latest Ubuntu, so for fun, I thought I'd have a little play with it and see if I could set up something to trial Phobos' uniform random number generators.
>
> The (very, VERY) provisional results are here:
> https://github.com/WebDrake/dtestu01

For those interested, the TestU01 project itself (by Pierre L'Ecuyer and colleagues at the Université de Montréal) can be found here:
http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~simardr/testu01/tu01.html