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From: Lewis Hyatt (lhyatt_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-06-05 17:00:48


> The posted trig method is correct, it chooses a horizontal cutting plane
> uniformly. You can show that the surface area of a sphere contained
> between two z-coordinates only depends on the difference between the two
> coordinates, not their location, so this generates the correct distribution.
>
> However, the "naive" method is incorrect, the resulting points are not
> uniformly distributed over the sphere. The correct version of the
> "naive" method is given here:
> http://mathworld.wolfram.com/SpherePointPicking.html
>

I take it back... this method does work OK after all. I believe those
listed at the above link are superior, though.

-Lewis


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