GSL-RANDIST(1)

okay so this is GSL-RANDIST(1) from the General Commands Manual — pull up a chair, bestie, we're learning a tiny GSL demo 🫶✨

🎀 NAME 🎀

gsl-randist — generate random samples from various distributions. That's the whole vibe: random samples, various distributions, iconic behavior 💅

✨ SYNOPSYS ✨

the page spells this section SYNOPSYS — not me, bestie 🙈 — and the shape is:

gsl-randist seed n DIST param1 param2 [..]

so you're giving it seed, n, DIST, then param1, param2, [..] — the parameters for whichever distribution you picked 🎀

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

gsl-randist is a demonstration program for the GNU Scientific Library — like a little show-and-tell for GSL 🧚💖. It generates n random samples from the distribution DIST using the distribution parameters param1, param2, ... .

🌸 EXAMPLE 🌸

Here's the example, and it's lowkey adorable because it pipes randist into the histogram tool and then plots it. We generate 10000 random samples from a Cauchy distribution with a width of 30 and histogram them over the range -100 to 100, using 200 bins 🔥

gsl-randist 0 10000 cauchy 30 | gsl-histogram -100 100 200 > histogram.dat

A plot of the resulting histogram will show the familiar shape of the Cauchy distribution with fluctuations caused by the finite sample size 🦋

and to make the plot, the page gives this exact command:

awk '{print $1, $3 ; print $2, $3}' histogram.dat | graph -T X

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

go check these out, iykyk 👑

• gsl(3)
• gsl-histogram(1)

👑 AUTHOR 👑

gsl-randist was written by James Theiler and Brian Gough. Copyright 1996-2000; for copying conditions see the GNU General Public Licence.

This manual page was added by the Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd@debian.org>, the Debian GNU/Linux maintainer for GSL.

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source/version: GNU; page: GSL-RANDIST(1); date: no date shown on this page — that's the footer tea, bestie 🫶💖