Creating a random point under the standard distribution curv

Page 1 of 1 [ 3 posts ] 

wbport
Sea Gull
Sea Gull

User avatar

Joined: 16 Sep 2012
Gender: Male
Posts: 222

01 Dec 2013, 7:52 pm

The random function in programming languages creates a (pseudo-)random number that has an equal chance of being anywhere in the range 0.0 to 1.0. For example if the mean was 0.0 and a "standard deviation" was 1.0, the random number could be anything. However, it would be more likely to lie between 0 and 1 than between 1 and 2 and a number > 5 would be extremely unlikely (previous integers could also be negative ending in ... < -5).

Thanks in advance.



IrishJew
Blue Jay
Blue Jay

User avatar

Joined: 22 Apr 2013
Age: 47
Gender: Male
Posts: 82

05 Dec 2013, 2:43 pm

It wouldn't be able to be a non-computable number, though. So it couldn't be just ANY number, right?



wbport
Sea Gull
Sea Gull

User avatar

Joined: 16 Sep 2012
Gender: Male
Posts: 222

05 Dec 2013, 8:15 pm

What I came up with ran the random function 20 times, summing the results. Applying the appropriate tweaks to it, I get a range of between -7.77 and + 7.77. Not exactly what I wanted but good enough "for all practical purposes".