John S. Ramberg – Communications of the ACM

Research and Advances Feb 1 1974

An approximate method for generating asymmetric random variables

Tukey's lambda distribution is generalized to provide an algorithm for generating values of unimodal asymmetric random variables. This algorithm has the same advantages as the symmetric random variable generator previously given by the authors, except that the addition of another parameter complicates the problem of finding the parameter values to fit a distribution.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Author Archives

Research and Advances Nov 1 1972

An approximate method for generating symmetric random variables

A method for generating values of continuous symmetric random variables that is relatively fast, requires essentially no computer memory, and is easy to use is developed. The method, which uses a uniform zero-one random number source, is based on the inverse function of the lambda distribution of Tukey. Since it approximates many of the continuous theoretical distributions and empirical distributions frequently used in simulations, the method should be useful to simulation practitioners.

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