The Fast Loaded Dice Roller: A Near-Optimal Exact Sampler for Discrete Probability Distributions · HackerPapers discussions

The Fast Loaded Dice Roller: A Near-Optimal Exact Sampler for Discrete Probability Distributions — mentioned by binarycoffee

Sat, 11 Jul 2020 16:28:58 GMT

So this is not what the article is about. It discusses a new method to generate integer values according to an arbitrary probability distribution, using as input a uniform random generator. Whether the input generator is truly random, pseudorandom, cryptographically secure etc, is irrelevant: the output will presumably only be as random/secure as the input RNG. Admittedly, the article does a poor job at explaining what the FLDR method is about, and it looks as biased as the method itself (sorry for the easy pun). From my understanding of the paper [1], the method is better than the…

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

The Fast Loaded Dice Roller: A Near-Optimal Exact Sampler for Discrete Probability Distributions — mentioned by acqq

Sat, 11 Jul 2020 15:08:47 GMT

The article is not about randomness in general, once one reads the whole. It's just the title and the longish intro that can mislead. It's about: https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.03830 "The Fast Loaded Dice Roller: A Near-Optimal Exact Sampler for Discrete Probability Distributions" "Empirical evaluations on a broad set of probability distributions establish that FLDR is 2x-10x faster in both preprocessing and sampling than multiple baseline algorithms, including the widely-used alias and interval samplers. It also uses up to 10000x less space than the information-theoretically optimal sampler, at…

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

The Fast Loaded Dice Roller: A Near-Optimal Exact Sampler for Discrete Probability Distributions — mentioned by freer

Thu, 28 May 2020 22:37:58 GMT

paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.03830 code: https://github.com/probcomp/fast-loaded-dice-roller

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.