I was experiencing inconsistent results between two machines and a linux server, until I realized that fixing the seed was having different effects. I am running different R
versions in all of them, all above 3.3.0
. Here are the examples:
Linux 1
> set.seed(10); rnorm(1)
[1] -0.4463588
> version
_
platform x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
arch x86_64
os linux-gnu
system x86_64, linux-gnu
status
major 3
minor 3.0
year 2016
month 05
day 03
svn rev 70573
language R
version.string R version 3.3.0 (2016-05-03)
nickname Supposedly Educational
Linux 2
> set.seed(10); rnorm(1)
[1] 0.01874617
> version
_
platform x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
arch x86_64
os linux-gnu
system x86_64, linux-gnu
status
major 3
minor 4.2
year 2017
month 09
day 28
svn rev 73368
language R
version.string R version 3.4.2 (2017-09-28)
nickname Short Summer
Mac OS
> set.seed(10); rnorm(1)
[1] 0.01874617
> version
_
platform x86_64-apple-darwin15.6.0
arch x86_64
os darwin15.6.0
system x86_64, darwin15.6.0
status
major 3
minor 4.3
year 2017
month 11
day 30
svn rev 73796
language R
version.string R version 3.4.3 (2017-11-30)
nickname Kite-Eating Tree
Windows
> set.seed(10); rnorm(1)
[1] 0.01874617
> version
_
platform x86_64-w64-mingw32
arch x86_64
os mingw32
system x86_64, mingw32
status
major 3
minor 4.1
year 2017
month 06
day 30
svn rev 72865
language R
version.string R version 3.4.1 (2017-06-30)
nickname Single Candle
Linux gives a different random number generation from the same seed, thus making the result of a script run on it not fully reproducible (depending on the OS in which they are re-run, the results will agree or not). This is annoying.
I do not know what is happening here. Particularly:
R
's versions or something more involved? EDIT originated from @Jesse Tweedle answer (output in Linux 1 in a new session):
> set.seed(10); rnorm(1)
[1] -0.4463588
> set.seed(10); rnorm(1)
[1] -0.4463588
> set.seed(102); rnorm(1)
[1] 0.05752965
> set.seed(10, kind = "Mersenne-Twister"); rnorm(1)
[1] 0.01874617
> set.seed(10); rnorm(1)
[1] 0.01874617
> set.seed(102); rnorm(1)
[1] 0.1805229
Random docs:
RNGversion can be used to set the random generators as they were in an earlier R version (for reproducibility).
So try this on all systems:
set.seed(10, kind = "Mersenne-Twister", normal.kind = "Inversion"); rnorm(1)
[1] 0.01874617
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