Computer Generation of Distributions on the M ‐Sphere

SUMMARY A technique is developed for constructing algorithms to generate pseudo random vectors from families of distributions on the unit m ‐sphere. The method is applied to the Fisher‐von Mises distribution to provide a generator which is easily programmed and very efficient. The Fisher–von Mises generator is then used in a brief Monte Carlo study on the validity of a test procedure developed by Stephens (1982).