On Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:27:32 -0700, castironpi wrote:
> You want a random integer. Is there a range you want it in?
>
> Past a certain point, you'll exceed the granularity of the random number
> generator, and some values in the range will never be generated.
You might want to produce an unbounded random integer, where *every*
integer has a chance to be returned:
def unbounded_randint():
i = 0
while True:
if random.random() < 0.5:
return i
i += 1
This returns 0 with probability 1/2, 1 with probability 1/4, 2 with
probability 1/8, etc. The probability distribution is centered close to
zero (the mode and median are both zero, and I'm too lazy to calculate
the mean) and it has an infinitely long tail.
--
Steven
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