Read Me file for RandIntG.exe, v. 2.01 (2000-10-16). Win32: Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0.

This program generates lists of nonnegative, 32-bit random numbers. It outputs each list in decimal and hex integers. Each random byte corresponding to a printable ASCII character also is output in a string below the numbers, for possible use in password composition. On exit from the program, a capture window presents all results for optional save to a text file. Install RandIntG by unZIPing the release file to any convenient directory. You should see: ReadMe.txt . . . 8500 bytes RandIntG.exe . . . 188,416 bytes Drop the .exe into any folder to create an icon. Version 2.01 makes minor improvements internally in the randomization. ----------------------------------------------------Program Details: Press [Generate] for a list of 16 new random numbers. Repeat any number of times. The numbers are true random numbers, not pseudorandom; so, the lists must be saved for repeatability. Press [Copy] to copy the latest (one) list to the Windows clipboard. Repeat [Generate] and [Copy] any number of times: The separate lists will remain visible unless closed individually; they all will close after [Quit] and then [Exit] from the capture window. Press [Quit] to cease random number generation. You will be presented a capture window which has cumulated all lists during the session, whether previously [Copy]'ed or not. Exitting from this capture window will terminate RantIntG. In the capture window (which will not display newline characters properly--to minimize peeking), you may select and copy parts of the cumulated lists to the clipboard, or you may save all cumulated lists to a text file. Any text editor will display the captured, saved lists formatted neatly. ----------------------------------------------------Internal Details: This is a C++ program developed in the Borland 5.01 Integrated Development Environment. Source is not provided.

The program source was about 1000 lines, residing in a header file for declarations, and in two implementation files. Side files for Windows resources also were used. When [Generate] is pressed, the displayed seed, or the default seed of 0, is combined with the current millisecond-resolved system real-time clock value to reseed each number listed; so, the results are truly random, not pseudorandom. An initial user seed optionally may be entered, but this rarely will be found useful and in any case will have little residual effect after one [Generate]. Each 32-bit integer is formed by concatenating two raw, 16-bit system rand() ints, which always have a MS bit of 0, and then XORing two new random bits at positions 31 and 15 to make a fully random integer. The string of printable characters is composed by testing in order each byte in the random number list against the ANSI 'C' isgraph() filter. ----------------------------------------------------Statistics: CAUTION: The sampling distribution of the random numbers may be platform specific. Only Windows NT 4 was used in the sampling below. One would expect that, the busier the multitasking system, the better the randomization. As a coarse check, 100 lists were generated in two separate, continuous series: The first series of 50 lists was generated at a rate of one per 3 seconds, as regularly as possible manually. After a few minutes' delay, a second series of 50 lists was generated at a regular rate of one per 30 seconds. Timing of each [Generate] was within about 0.5 sec. The captured text lists were saved to disc for analysis. The sampling runs were done in relatively quiet Windows NT 4.0 (Service Pack 3), on a 200 MHz Dell Pentium Pro PC with Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS, version 1.10. No manual seed value was entered; and, on the test machine, each list took slightly more than 1 second to generate. The resulting 1600 decimal numbers were pasted into a Statistica (R) spreadsheet for analysis. The decimal numerical values themselves first were examined graphically: No important trend or other overall feature was seen within either series of 50; neither did there seem to be anything systematic in the average value of random integer by position within the list of 16.

Inspection of 50 list x 50 list scatterplots, one for each series, showed that the lists occasionally seemed somewhat correlated, but duplicate lists were not found. A 100 x 100 Pearson r crosscorrelation table showed that less than 5% of the entries were significant at the 0.05 level. The average intercorrelation between lists, for the 3-second series, the 30-second series, and between the 3 vs 30 second series, was within 0.1 of 0.0 (sd within 0.03 of 0.30). This suggests no important linear trend within a list, regardless of the scheduling of the commands used to generate successive random integer lists. Individual list means and number-order (within list) means were quite normally distributed, consistent with the central limit theorem. Then, the 16,000 individual random digits (in decimal) were examined. Only the lower 9 digits of a random number in a list were kept, because the most significant decimal digit cannot exceed 4 for an unsigned 32-bit integer. A Perl script was used to count numerals in each of the above 50-list series, and the result again was entered into Statistica, this time as 10 columns, one per decimal digit numeral, and 100 rows of list counts. The result was 14400 decimal numerals with, of course, expected value 1440 each, in the entire sample of 100 lists. +---------+--------+----------+----------+----------+ | Decimal | | Observed | Observed | Observed | | Numeral | Binary | n = 100 | n = 50 | n = 50 | | | | Count | (3 sec) | (30 sec) | +---------+--------+----------+----------+----------+ | 0 | 0000 | 1428 | 691 | 737 | +---------+--------+----------+----------+----------+ | 1 | 0001 | 1460 | 739 | 721 | +---------+--------+----------+----------+----------+ | 2 | 0010 | 1446 | 737 | 709 | +---------+--------+----------+----------+----------+ | 3 | 0011 | 1405 | 704 | 701 | +---------+--------+----------+----------+----------+ | 4 | 0100 | 1418 | 728 | 690 | +---------+--------+----------+----------+----------+ | 5 | 0101 | 1417 | 699 | 718 | +---------+--------+----------+----------+----------+ | 6 | 0110 | 1454 | 724 | 730 | +---------+--------+----------+----------+----------+ | 7 | 0111 | 1481 | 740 | 741 | +---------+--------+----------+----------+----------+ | 8 | 1000 | 1431 | 721 | 710 | +---------+--------+----------+----------+----------+ | 9 | 1001 | 1460 | 717 | 743 | +---------+--------+--------------------------------+ Expected (Mean) = 1440 720 720 +--------------------------------+

Approx. SD of Count = 24 17 18 | +--------------------------------+ Visual inspection reveals no obvious trend or exception among the digit counts tabulated above. The Pearson intercorrelations within and between the various lists were at chance levels. As visible in the table above, the obtained counts all were within two sample standard deviations of the theoretical expectancies. No decimal digit count fell more than about 4% away from the expected frequency, under the assumption of perfectly equal likelihood among digits. In conclusion, the program seems to produce reasonably independent lists of fairly uniformly distributed random integers. Occasional use would be expected to produce completely random lists. Users should be certain to understand that this program is supplied STRICTLY AS-IS and with NO WARRANTY of fitness for any purpose. The statistics above are reported accurately and are meant to be informative, but NO WARRANTY is expressed or implied. ----------------------------------------------------This freeware program is Copyright (c) 2000 by John Michael Williams and may be copied or redistributed freely for any purpose, provided the executable and this ReadMe file always are copied or distributed together. Creator: John Michael Williams (jmmwill@comcast.net) Wilsonville, Oregon.