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From: rick@hanauma.stanford.edu (Richard Ottolini)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: random points on surface of sphere
Keywords: uniform spherical distribution, random walk
Message-ID: <1220@med.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 6 May 90 22:34:38 GMT
References: <1523@ryn.esg.dec.com+ <40768@apple.Apple.COM>
Sender: news@med.stanford.edu (USENET News System)
Organization: Stanford University, Department of Geophysics
Lines: 14

In article <40768@apple.Apple.COM+ dvb@Apple.COM (David Van Brink) writes:
+
+A mathemetician friend of mine worked out an absurdly
+simple means of finding a random point on the surface
+of a unit radius sphere. 
+
+1. Pick a random angle, 0 <= theta < 360. This is in
+the x-y plane.
+
+2. Pick a random z-value from -1 to 1 ( "<=" or "<" ?
+I'm not sure).

Huh?  Each latitude will have the same fraction of points and things
will appear more crowded at the poles.