Box–Muller transform

The Box–Muller transform, by George Edward

Pelham Box and Mervin Edgar Muller,[1] is a random
number sampling method for generating pairs of
independent, standard, normally distributed (zero
expectation, unit variance) random numbers, given a
source of uniformly distributed random numbers. The
method was in fact first mentioned explicitly by
Raymond E. A. C. Paley and Norbert Wiener in
1934.[2]

The Box–Muller transform is commonly expressed in

two forms. The basic form as given by Box and Muller
takes two samples from the uniform distribution on the
interval [0,  1] and maps them to two standard,
normally distributed samples. The polar form takes two
samples from a different interval, [−1,  +1], and maps
them to two normally distributed samples without the
use of sine or cosine functions.
The Box–Muller transform was developed as a more
computationally efficient alternative to the inverse
transform sampling method.[3] The ziggurat algorithm
gives a more efficient method for scalar processors
(e.g. old CPUs), while the Box–Muller transform is
superior for processors with vector units (e.g. GPUs or
modern CPUs).[4]
Visualisation of the Box–Muller transform — the
coloured points in the unit square (u1, u2), drawn
as circles, are mapped to a 2D Gaussian (z0, z1),
drawn as crosses. The plots at the margins are
the probability distribution functions of z0 and z1.
z0 and z1 are unbounded; they appear to be in
[-2.5,2.5] due to the choice of the illustrated
points. In the SVG file (https://upload.wikimedia.or
g/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Box-Muller_transform_v
isualisation.svg), hover over a point to highlight it
and its corresponding point.

Basic form
Suppose U1 and U2 are independent samples chosen from the uniform distribution on the unit interval
(0, 1). Let

and

Then Z0 and Z1 are independent random variables with a standard normal distribution.

The derivation[5] is based on a property of a two-dimensional Cartesian system, where X and Y coordinates
are described by two independent and normally distributed random variables, the random variables for R2
and Θ (shown above) in the corresponding polar coordinates are also independent and can be expressed as
and

Because R2 is the square of the norm of the standard bivariate normal variable (X, Y), it has the chi-squared
distribution with two degrees of freedom. In the special case of two degrees of freedom, the chi-squared
distribution coincides with the exponential distribution, and the equation for R2 above is a simple way of
generating the required exponential variate.

Polar form
The polar form was first proposed by J.
Bell[6] and then modified by R.
Knop.[7] While several different
versions of the polar method have been
described, the version of R. Knop will
be described here because it is the most
widely used, in part due to its inclusion
in Numerical Recipes.

Given u and v, independent and

uniformly distributed in the closed
interval [−1, +1], set s = R2 = u2 + v2 .
If s = 0 or s ≥ 1, discard u and v, and
try another pair (u, v). Because u and v Two uniformly distributed values, u and v are used to produce the
are uniformly distributed and because value s = R2, which is likewise uniformly distributed. The definitions
only points within the unit circle have of the sine and cosine are then applied to the basic form of the
been admitted, the values of s will be Box–Muller transform to avoid using trigonometric functions.
uniformly distributed in the open
interval (0,  1), too. The latter can be
seen by calculating the cumulative distribution function for s in the interval (0, 1). This is the area of a circle
with radius , divided by . From this we find the probability density function to have the constant value 1
on the interval (0, 1). Equally so, the angle θ divided by is uniformly distributed in the interval [0, 1) and
independent of s.

We now identify the value of s with that of U1 and with that of U2 in the basic form. As shown in the
figure, the values of and in the basic form can be replaced with the ratios
and , respectively. The advantage is that calculating the trigonometric
functions directly can be avoided. This is helpful when trigonometric functions are more expensive to
compute than the single division that replaces each one.

Just as the basic form produces two standard normal deviates, so does this alternate calculation.

and
Contrasting the two forms
The polar method differs from the basic method in that it is a type of rejection sampling. It discards some
generated random numbers, but can be faster than the basic method because it is simpler to compute
(provided that the random number generator is relatively fast) and is more numerically robust.[8] Avoiding
the use of expensive trigonometric functions improves speed over the basic form.[6] It discards
1 − π /4 ≈ 21.46% of the total input uniformly distributed random number pairs generated, i.e. discards
4/π − 1 ≈ 27.32% uniformly distributed random number pairs per Gaussian random number pair generated,
requiring 4/π ≈ 1.2732 input random numbers per output random number.

The basic form requires two multiplications, 1/2 logarithm, 1/2 square root, and one trigonometric function
for each normal variate.[9] On some processors, the cosine and sine of the same argument can be calculated
in parallel using a single instruction. Notably for Intel-based machines, one can use the fsincos assembler
instruction or the expi instruction (usually available from C as an intrinsic function), to calculate complex

and just separate the real and imaginary parts.

Note: To explicitly calculate the complex-polar form use the following substitutions in the general form,

Let and Then

The polar form requires 3/2 multiplications, 1/2 logarithm, 1/2 square root, and 1/2 division for each normal
variate. The effect is to replace one multiplication and one trigonometric function with a single division and
a conditional loop.

Tails truncation
When a computer is used to produce a uniform random variable it will inevitably have some inaccuracies
because there is a lower bound on how close numbers can be to 0. If the generator uses 32 bits per output
value, the smallest non-zero number that can be generated is . When and are equal to this the
Box–Muller transform produces a normal random deviate equal to
. This means that the algorithm will not produce random
variables more than 6.660 standard deviations from the mean. This corresponds to a proportion of
lost due to the truncation, where is the standard cumulative normal
distribution. With 64 bits the limit is pushed to standard deviations, for which
.

Implementation
The standard Box–Muller transform generates values from the standard normal distribution (i.e. standard
normal deviates) with mean 0 and standard deviation 1. The implementation below in standard C++
generates values from any normal distribution with mean and variance . If is a standard normal
deviate, then will have a normal distribution with mean and standard deviation . The
random number generator has been seeded to ensure that new, pseudo-random values will be returned from
sequential calls to the generateGaussianNoise function.

#include <cmath>
#include <limits>
#include <random>
#include <utility>

std::pair<double, double> generateGaussianNoise(double mu, double sigma)

{
constexpr double epsilon = std::numeric_limits<double>::epsilon();
constexpr double two_pi = 2.0 * M_PI;

//initialize the random uniform number generator (runif) in a range 0 to 1

static std::mt19937 rng(std::random_device{}()); // Standard mersenne_twister_engine
seeded with rd()
static std::uniform_real_distribution<> runif(0.0, 1.0);

//create two random numbers, make sure u1 is greater than epsilon

double u1, u2;
do
{
u1 = runif(rng);
}
while (u1 <= epsilon);
u2 = runif(rng);

//compute z0 and z1
auto mag = sigma * sqrt(-2.0 * log(u1));
auto z0 = mag * cos(two_pi * u2) + mu;
auto z1 = mag * sin(two_pi * u2) + mu;

return std::make_pair(z0, z1);

}

See also
Inverse transform sampling
Marsaglia polar method, similar transform to Box–Muller, which uses Cartesian coordinates,
instead of polar coordinates

References
Howes, Lee; Thomas, David (2008). GPU Gems 3 - Efficient Random Number Generation
and Application Using CUDA. Pearson Education, Inc. ISBN 978-0-321-51526-1.

1. Box, G. E. P.; Muller, Mervin E. (1958). "A Note on the Generation of Random Normal
Deviates" (https://doi.org/10.1214%2Faoms%2F1177706645). The Annals of Mathematical
Statistics. 29 (2): 610–611. doi:10.1214/aoms/1177706645 (https://doi.org/10.1214%2Faom
s%2F1177706645). JSTOR 2237361 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2237361).
2. Raymond E. A. C. Paley and Norbert Wiener Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain,
New York: American Mathematical Society (1934) §37.
3. Kloeden and Platen, Numerical Solutions of Stochastic Differential Equations, pp. 11–12
4. Howes & Thomas 2008.
 5. Sheldon Ross, A First Course in Probability, (2002), pp. 279–281
6. Bell, James R. (1968). "Algorithm 334: Normal random deviates" (http://portal.acm.org/citatio
n.cfm?doid=363397.363547). Communications of the ACM. 11 (7): 498.
doi:10.1145/363397.363547 (https://doi.org/10.1145%2F363397.363547).
7. Knop, R. (1969). "Remark on algorithm 334 [G5]: Normal random deviates" (http://portal.acm.
org/citation.cfm?doid=362946.362996). Communications of the ACM. 12 (5): 281.
doi:10.1145/362946.362996 (https://doi.org/10.1145%2F362946.362996).
8. Everett F. Carter, Jr., The Generation and Application of Random Numbers, Forth
Dimensions (1994), Vol. 16, No. 1 & 2. (ftp://ftp.taygeta.com/pub/publications/randnum.tar.Z)
9. The evaluation of 2π U1 is counted as one multiplication because the value of 2π can be
computed in advance and used repeatedly.

External links
Weisstein, Eric W. "Box-Muller Transformation" (https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Box-MullerTr
ansformation.html). MathWorld.
How to Convert a Uniform Distribution to a Gaussian Distribution (C Code) (https://cockrum.
net/code.html#TrueRNG_gaussian)

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