something better than rand or mt_rand

[jonsjava]

I got curious one day, so I wrote a small script that would run rand(1,1000) and mt_rand(1,000) 1,000,000 times each, and calculated the average. I had assumed that over time, the average would be somewhere around 500 (for every high, you would get a low). Well, the crazy thing is that it would hit 250 average every time, no matter the function (rand or mt_rand). I'm talking about within a decimal place of being exactly 250 for the average. That doesn't sound too random. So, the question: is there a class that is built for creating randoms that works better than the built-in random functions? If so, please point me to where I can find that.

 

Thanks.

[samshel]

<?php
error_reporting(7);
$intCount = 1000000;
$intSum = 0;

for($i=0;$i<$intCount;$i++) {
    $intSum = $intSum + rand(1, 1000);
}
echo $intSum."--";
echo $intSum/$intCount;
?>

 

this code gives me average as 500.something...as expected...same with mt_rand()

[waynewex]

Nothing is truly random.