Random processes

You may have noticed that the Distribution trait does not allow mutation of self (no &mut self methods). This is by design: a probability distribution is defined as a mapping from events to probabilities.

In contrast, a Stochastic Process concerns a family of variables (or state) which mutate in a random manner.

We do not attempt to define a general API covering random processes or to provide direct support for modelling them. Here we merely discuss some.

Sampling without replacement

Given, for example, a bag of 10 red marbles and 30 green marbles, the initial probability that a marble sampled from the bag is red is 10/(10 + 30) = ¼ = 0.25. If the first marble is red and is not replaced, then the probability that the second marble sampled from the bag is red is 9/(9 + 30) = 3/13 ≅ 0.23.

The rand crate does not provide any system supporting step-wise sampling without replacement. What it does provide is support for sampling multiple distinct values from a sequence in a single step: IteratorRandom::choose_multiple and SliceRandom::choose_multiple.

If you wish to implement step-wise sampling yourself, here are a few ideas:

• Place all elements in a Vec. Each step sample and remove one value. Note that if the set of all possible elements is large this is inefficient since Vec::remove is O(n) and since all elements must be constructed.
• Place all elements in a Vec and shuffle. Each step simply take the next element.
• Construct a method of sampling values from the initial distribution plus an empty HashSet representing "taken" values. Each step, sample a value; if it is in the HashSet then reject the value and sample again, otherwise place a copy in a HashSet and return. Note that this method is inefficient unless the number of samples taken is much smaller than the number of available elements.
• Investigate src/seq/index.rs: several sampling algorithms are used which may be adjusted to this application.