Random Points on a Sphere

Re:Random Points on a Sphere by davmre on Monday April 27, 2015 @03:03PM (#9448449)

Yeah, the Gaussian trick is like programming in a high-level language: using existing abstractions lets you write clean and concise code, at the price of some efficiency versus the optimal engineered-from-scratch solution.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Random Points on a Sphere by carlob on Tuesday April 28, 2015 @07:19AM (#9451440)

I'm not sure I agree, I think the really high-level option is to use a library and not roll your own.

For example:

https://www.gnu.org/software/gsl/manual/html_node/Spherical-...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Random Points on a Sphere by davmre on Tuesday April 28, 2015 @03:51PM (#9454712)

Fair enough. Though it looks like gsl_ran_dir_nd is implemented using normalized Gaussians, so in this case we're back where we started. :-)

[ Parent | on HN ]