randomness

[Darrell McCauley]

I need to generate random points. It's
important that the points simulate a
homogeneous Poisson process (close as
possible). The inadequacies of rand() have
been well documented, so my feeling is that
r.random may also be lacking (since it uses
rand()).  Has anyone tested this program and
documented its performance (Monte Carlo
methods, perhaps using the outline given on
pp. 635-6 in Cressie's _Statistics for
Spatial Data_)? If so, can you provide
this documentation?

Does anyone have any GRASS alternatives?
Does anyone have a need for alternatives?

Not only do I need to generate random
points, but I also need to use them to
randomly select sites, perhaps using a
nearest neighbor approach. This is for a
k-fold cross validation of some
interpolation methods.  Would anyone else
have a need for a GRASS program that does
this?

I ask because if I get one or two others
that say "yes, I need that," then the
probability is pretty high that I'll package
up another GRASS program or two (for some
reason I'm in a programming mood %-).

To that end, is there any random number
generator already contained in GRASS code
somewhere?