How to generate uniformly distributed random integers?
3 views (last 30 days)
Show older comments
Pannir Selvam Elamvazhuthi
on 25 Jul 2011
Edited: Sergio Enrique Pinto Castillo
on 28 Jul 2020
I've been using "ceil(4*rand)" to generate random integers from 1 to 4. But when I tried to check the uniformity, I found that I do not get a probability of 0.25 and instead have p(1)=0.24997, p(2)=0.25102, p(3)=0.24949 and p(4)=0.24951 after generating 10,00,000 values. Is it good enough to say that it's uniform?
0 Comments
Accepted Answer
the cyclist
on 25 Jul 2011
Yes. You should not expect to get exactly 25% of each, every time. That is expected behavior of random numbers.
FYI, it may be more convenient for you to use the randi() function to do what you are doing.
1 Comment
Walter Roberson
on 25 Jul 2011
the cyclist is correct. Please see also the description in http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/12307-how-to-generate-a-uniform-random-variable-in-the-interval-1-1-with-mean-zero
More Answers (2)
Pannir Selvam Elamvazhuthi
on 28 Aug 2011
1 Comment
the cyclist
on 29 Aug 2011
No problem on the late response. However, you should consider deleting this "answer" (because it is not answer), and making it a comment on my answer.
Sergio Enrique Pinto Castillo
on 28 Jul 2020
Edited: Sergio Enrique Pinto Castillo
on 28 Jul 2020
I think the answer is:
Num = 1000;
vec = randi([1 Num],1,Num);
This instruction generate a vector with random uniformly distributed integers between 1 and 1000
0 Comments
See Also
Categories
Find more on Random Number Generation in Help Center and File Exchange
Community Treasure Hunt
Find the treasures in MATLAB Central and discover how the community can help you!
Start Hunting!