Why is the Mersenne twister prefered to using the wichmann hill algorithm to produce pseudo random numbers?

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I read that in version by Python 2.3 https://stackless.readthedocs.io/en/2.7-slp/library/random.html the Mersenne twister replaced the Wichmann-Hill method as default generator. I was wondering if something can elaborate why this one would do that. I understand, that the period is a bigger for the Mersenne twister, but are there other features, that could drive this change?

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Peter O. On

The documentation you linked to says: "[The] period [of WichmannHill] is too short by contemporary standards, and the sequence generated is known to fail some stringent randomness tests." If that explanation is not enough for you, you will have to ask the Python community. Otherwise, it would be speculation to give further reasons on why Mersenne Twister replaced Wichmann-Hill in Python 2.3.