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How to simulate random samples from crooked coin toss?

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg58511] How to simulate random samples from crooked coin toss?
• From: DAN BIKLE <dbikle at gmail.com>
• Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2005 01:57:50 -0400 (EDT)
• Reply-to: DAN BIKLE <dbikle at gmail.com>
• Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

Math People,

I'm new to Mathematica so please bear with me.

I have a simple problem I want to solve and I'm looking
for some ideas to get started on it.

I want to simulate 100 tosses of a crooked coin where
probability of Heads is 0.6 and Tails is 0.4.

After I figure the coin out, I want to move on to crooked
dice and crooked card decks.

So, really what I'm looking for has more to do with developing
a method to simulate the collection of random samples.

I looked around in Help and found a promising sentence:

"Random[distribution] gives a random number with the specified
statistical distribution."

Then I found a page here which has some clues:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/DiscreteDistribution.html

Unfortunately, I'm weak with math notation so the above
page makes little sense to me.

So, let me put it to you as simply as I can:

I want to define a function that could be called like this:

numberOfHeads = coinTosser[infoAboutCoin, numberOfTosses, head]
numberOfTails = coinTosser[infoAboutCoin, numberOfTosses, tail]

Once I figure out how to write the above function,
I could template off of it to build something like this:

numberOfOnes = diceRoller[infoAboutThisDie, numberOfRolls, aOne]

Do any of you have thoughts on how to approach the
writing of the above functions?

-Dan
-- 
dbikle at gmail.com

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: How to simulate random samples from crooked coin toss?
    • From: Curtis Osterhoudt <gardyloo@mail.wsu.edu>
  • Re: How to simulate random samples from crooked coin toss?
    • From: Sseziwa Mukasa <mukasa@jeol.com>
  • Re: How to simulate random samples from crooked coin toss?
    • From: "Matthias Bode" <lvsaba@hotmail.com>