Re: [boost] Computing Random Points on Sphere

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