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Re: Beginner--Help on Listing Values

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg74940] Re: [mg74919] Beginner--Help on Listing Values
• From: Darren Glosemeyer <darreng at wolfram.com>
• Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 04:48:51 -0400 (EDT)
• References: <200704110558.BAA02825@smc.vnet.net>

m.lungay at gmail.com wrote:
> I need to create a list of probability values for a certain random variable X. It is very difficult if i keep on enumerating the entries especially when the length required is large, say the list is of length 100. Maybe there is some way where I could generate the entries in a random manner. There is a code Random[], but how could I implement it in a List manner so that the sum of the results must be 1. Please help!
>
>  
>
> Link to the forum page for this post:
> http://www.mathematica-users.org/webMathematica/wiki/wiki.jsp?pageName=Special:Forum_ViewTopic&pid=17333#p17333
> Posted through http://www.mathematica-users.org [[postId=17333]]
>
>
>   

It is not clear from the message what the nature of the random variable 
X is. Assuming you want a list of n uniformly distributed random values 
that sum to 1, you could generate n values via Random[] and then divide 
those values by their total. Here is an example with n==10.


In[1]:= rvals = Table[Random[], {10}]

Out[1]= {0.432052, 0.540504, 0.925453, 0.0643451, 0.650853, 0.614416, 
0.827691, 0.557976,
 
 >    0.432144, 0.1755}

In[2]:= rvals/Total[rvals]

Out[2]= {0.0827537, 0.103526, 0.177258, 0.0123244, 0.124662, 0.117683, 
0.158533, 0.106873,
 
 >    0.0827714, 0.0336146}

In[3]:= Total[%]

Out[3]= 1.


The following probList function could be used to generate a list of 
length n.


In[4]:= probList[n_] := With[{rvals = Table[Random[], {n}]},
            rvals/Total[rvals]]

In[5]:= probList[20]

Out[5]= {0.0765762, 0.0652854, 0.070426, 0.0266055, 0.0139826, 0.011429, 
0.00404757,
 
 >    0.0716607, 0.0370334, 0.0251732, 0.0643284, 0.072781, 0.0637495, 
0.0785196,
 
 >    0.0290183, 0.0286076, 0.069842, 0.0732609, 0.0575529, 0.06012}

In[6]:= Total[%]

Out[6]= 1.


Darren Glosemeyer
Wolfram Research

• References:
  • Beginner--Help on Listing Values
    • From: m.lungay@gmail.com