An automatic code generator for nonuniform random variate generation
There exists a vast literature on nonuniform random variate generators. Most of these generators are especially designed for a particular distribution. However, in pratice only a few of these are available to practioners. Moreover, for problems as (e.g.) sampling from the truncated normal distribution or sampling from fairly uncommon distributions there are often no algorithms available. In the last decade so called universal methods have been developed for these cases. The resulting algorithms are fast and have properties that make them attractive even for standard distributions. In this contribution we describe the concept of Automatic random variate generation where these methods are used to produce a single piece of code in a high level programming language. Using a web-based front-end to such a program this is an easy-to-use source for researchers and programmers for high quality generators for a large class of distributions. Using our UNURAN library we have implemented such a system, which is accessable at http://statistik.wu-wien.ac.at/anuran. (C) 2003 IMACS. Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
automatic code generator nonuniform random variate generation universal algorithm transformed density rejection continuous distribution