Diehard tests
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- note: archiving this from Wikipedia before it is deleted.
The diehard tests are a battery of statistical tests for measuring the quality of a random number generator. They were developed by George Marsaglia over several years and first published in 1995 on a CD-ROM of random numbers.
These are the tests:
- Birthday spacings: Choose random points on a large interval. The spacings between the points should be asymptotically exponentially distributed.[1] The name is based on the birthday paradox.
- Overlapping permutations: Analyze sequences of five consecutive random numbers. The 120 possible orderings should occur with statistically equal probability.
- Ranks of matrices: Select some number of bits from some number of random numbers to form a matrix over {0,1}, then determine the rank of the matrix. Count the ranks.
- Monkey tests: Treat sequences of some number of bits as "words". Count the overlapping words in a stream. The number of "words" that do not appear should follow a known distribution. The name is based on the infinite monkey theorem.
- Count the 1s: Count the 1 bits in each of either successive or chosen bytes. Convert the counts to "letters", and count the occurrences of five-letter "words".
- Parking lot test: Randomly place unit circles in a 100 x 100 square. A circle is successfully parked, if it does not overlaps an existing successfully parked one. After 12,000 tries, the number of successfully parked circles should follow a certain normal distribution.
- Minimum distance test: Randomly place 8,000 points in a 10,000 x 10,000 square, then find the minimum distance between the pairs. The square of this distance should be exponentially distributed with a certain mean.
- Random spheres test: Randomly choose 4,000 points in a cube of edge 1,000. Center a sphere on each point, whose radius is the minimum distance to another point. The smallest sphere's volume should be exponentially distributed with a certain mean.
- The squeeze test: Multiply 231 by random floats on (0,1) until you reach 1. Repeat this 100,000 times. The number of floats needed to reach 1 should follow a certain distribution.
- Overlapping sums test: Generate a long sequence of random floats on (0,1). Add sequences of 100 consecutive floats. The sums should be normally distributed with characteristic mean and variance.
- Runs test: Generate a long sequence of random floats on (0,1). Count ascending and descending runs. The counts should follow a certain distribution.
- The craps test: Play 200,000 games of craps, counting the wins and the number of throws per game. Each count should follow a certain distribution.
See also
Notes
- ↑ Renyi, 1953, p194
External links
- The Marsaglia Random Number CDROM including the Diehard Battery of Tests of Randomness
- Mirror site
- DieHarder: a random number test suite including an alternative GPL implementation of Diehard tests in C
- Renyi, A (1953). On the theory of order statistics, Acta Mathematica Hungarica Akadémiai Kiadó
