The rand_bytes
function binds to RAND_bytes in
OpenSSL to generate cryptographically strong pseudo-random bytes. See
the OpenSSL documentation for what this means.
[1] 9b ab 1c 26 9d 40 38 2d ca 86
Bytes are 8 bit and hence can have 2^8 = 256
possible
values.
[1] 155 171 28 38 157 64 56 45 202 134
Each random byte can be decomposed into 8 random bits (booleans)
[1] TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE FALSE TRUE FALSE FALSE
rand_num
is a simple (2 lines) wrapper to
rand_bytes
to generate random numbers (doubles) between 0
and 1.
[1] 0.04095567 0.31739546 0.90463820 0.15194767 0.50125994 0.36820675
[7] 0.83577414 0.52595411 0.44511473 0.99323111
To map random draws from [0,1] into a probability density, we can use
a Cumulative
Distribution Function. For example we can combine qnorm
and rand_num
to simulate rnorm
:
Same for discrete distributions: