Sean Luke wrote:

> Tomislav, MASON doesn't have a built-in probability distribution

> event scheduler.  It's a bit more low-level than that but if you

> think it'd be useful we should probably add something in.



Thanks for the prompt answer, Sean.

I will attempt to use existing libraries then, and will see how that goes.



> If you want to hack your own, MASON lets you schedule events for

> any particular time in the future, so you could generate a random

> number, transformed to the appropriate distribution, and then

> schedule using that value as a time.



I'm not sure how I would go about transforming uniform distribution

random numbers to a specific distribution...I could do it for simple,

streight-lined artificial distributions, but for distributions like

gamma, it'd turn into a project of it's own...



> I'd be interested in adding this in but am presently out of the

> country, so it will have to wait for a week or two.



Thinking about it, it seems to me that it would be good enough to

track down one or two good libraries supporting a wide variety of

probability distributions and do the following:

- package them together with mason if the licences are compatible and/or

- update the mason documentation so that it links heavily to the

selected libraries and explains how to use them



This would have the following benefits:

- is relatively easy to do

- would make it clear to mason users that this is the recommended way

to generate random values according to a specific distribution

- would spare users the burden of having to search for good libraries

themselves



To that effect, when I'm done with my project, I can provide a short

summary about my experiences and you might be able to use that for a

start.



Cheers,

Tomislav



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