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easy question about random numbers

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg53382] easy question about random numbers
  • From: Pedrito <pedrito6 at softhome.net>
  • Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2005 23:02:44 -0500 (EST)
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

Hi everybody!

I wanted to obtain a discrete random number generator that I needed for
a project.

On the library Statistics`DiscreteDistributions` I could find the DiscreteUniformDistribution
function. But I wanted to specify the probability for each one of the
states.


For instance:
If we need to simulate an unfair dice, we could have this probabilities
for each one of the sides:
{1/6, 1/6, 1/6, 1/6, 9/60, 11/60}

So I wrote:
li2 = {1/6, 1/6, 1/6, 1/6, 9/60, 11/60}
li3=FoldList[Plus,0,li2]
Module[{i = 1, r = Random[]}, While[ !li3[[i]] < r < li3[[i + 1]], i++]; i]

It works ok but I don't know if there is another (better) way of doing
this.
Any suggestion?


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