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Archives of the TeradataForum
Message Posted: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 @ 13:32:46 GMT
| Subj: | | Re: Random Sampling |
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| From: | | Geoffrey Rommel |
| | I have been asked to provide a "truly random" sample of records from a table that exists in our Teradata. | |
| | While I have read the manual on SAMPLE and RANDOM I am unsure that these functions will provide a statistically valid
sample. | |
Someone once told me that the algorithm used by Teradata is lrand48. This is a well-known algorithm that operates with 48-
bit numbers and I believe is considered pretty good. As for the sampling, I strongly suspect that they use the Waterman algorithm
(Knuth, Algorithm 3.4.2R).
The outputs of lrand48 probably meet all the tests you would care to meet (spectral, chi-square, etc.), but if your application
demands numbers not produced by an algorithm of any kind, you must go to a truly random source, such as
www.random.org .
--wgr
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