[R] acos(0.5) == pi/3 FALSE

[Johannes Hüsing]

Peter Dalgaard:
> Ben Bolker <bolker at zoo.ufl.edu> writes:
>>          1. compose your response
> I've always wondered why step 1. - often the time-consuming bit - is not
> listed last.

The advice applies to the situation when answering immediately would be
your knee-jerk reaction. It is assumed that actually composing and sending
the mail would take very little time and thought, whereas coming around to
answering it after runif(1)*4 hours would take considerably more time, even
when mulitiplied with the probability that you are still the first one.

Looking at the submission times of questions and answers in this
particular case, though, I would be upset if the helpful guys actually
used this algorithm. Most of the answers were submitted after 3.5 to 4 h
time, thus revealing a possible flaw of the random number generator
underlying runif().