The "Mersenne Twister" random number generator has a period of 2^19937-1, and generates 32-bit random numbers with good distribution properties "up to 623 dimensions." Code is available from or <.../mt19937b-int.c> (for the integer-valued version). . [Stephen Stanhope , gann-list, 27Oct97. Bill Park.]

Tally statistics for the SGI Lavarand system (using a bank of Lava Lamps to generate random number seeds) can be found at . [Craig W. Reynolds , genetic-programming, 29Oct97. Bill Park.]

Specialty solvers for PC-based Excel spreadsheets include (as of a year ago) Axcelis Evolver; Frontsys Premium Solver, ; New Light Industries Generator (genetic algorithms); Ward Systems Genehunter (genetic algorithms); Symbolic Systems Genetica; Palisade Best Fit (probability distributions); LINDO What's Best (linear optimization), ; Heizer/Baarns Best Answer; Decisioneering Crystal Ball (Monte Carlo simulator); Logix Magestic; Exatech XSolver (simulated annealing); and Interval Solver, . Some of these may have Mac versions now. You can find more information from SciTech International or Baarns Publishing. [Stan Hadley , comp.apps.spreadsheets, 28Oct97.]

SPSS Inc. will be discontinuing development of SPSS for Macintosh. DeltaGraph 4.04 for Macintosh will continue development, with 5.0 due in the 2nd half of 1998. SYSTAT 5.21 for Macintosh is two releases behind SYSTAT 7.0 for Windows, and an upgrade project ran into trouble when the company doing the port was acquired by another. SigmaPlot 5.01 for Macintosh is actually several releases behind SigmaPlot 4.0 for Windows (and is closer to SigmaPlot 2.0 for Windows), and users are advised to transition to DeltaGraph. [Joel York , comp.soft-sys.stat.spss, 27Oct97.]