Maxwell distribution in C++11 (July 29, 2014)
Hey all,
I recently needed to generate values following a Maxwell distribution. Wikipedia gives the hint that this is a Gamma distribution, which in C++11 is easily useable. Thus, thanks to <random>, we can setup a Maxwell distribution in a few lines of code:
#include <random>
#include <chrono>
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
unsigned seed = chrono::system_clock::now().time_since_epoch().count();
default_random_engine generator(seed);
// Boltzmann factor times temperature
const double k_T = 0.1;
// setup the Maxwell distribution, i.e. gamma distribution with alpha = 3/2
gamma_distribution<double> maxwell(3./2., k_T);
// generate Maxwell-distributed values
for (int i = 0; i < 10000; ++i) {
cout << maxwell(generator) << endl;
}
return 0;
}
Pretty neat, I have to say!