Re: Parallel program to calculate PI

Bart said:

> On May 13, 5:00 pm, Richard Heathfield <r...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

<snip>

>> n %= max

* max;

>> ;
>> return;
>>
>> }
>>
>> If you call this i * max times, where max is a constant and i is an
>> integer, the distribution of the random points will be uniform.
> 
> You mean max*max?

Yes.

> This looks to be simply filling in a square sequentially.

Yes.

> You are then
> effectively calculating the area of a circle in a square by counting
> the all dots.

Yes.

> That's not really in the spirit of the original method.

No - but at least it would have been funny, if only I hadn't screwed it
up.

I once saw a wonderful pi calculation method on the Web (to which I can't 
find a URL right now) - it was a Monte Carlo method, which used millions 
of digits of pi as a PRNG, and concluded... that pi is about 3. Fabulous!

-- 
Richard Heathfield <http://www.cpax.org.uk>
Email: -http://www.
+rjh@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 users: <http://www.cpax.org.uk/prg/writings/googly.php>
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999