Get a random number focused on center

Question

Is it possible to get a random number between 1-100 and keep the results mainly within the 40-60 range? I mean, it will go out of that range rarely, but I want it to be mainly within that range... Is it possible with JavaScript/jQuery?

Right now I'm just using the basic Math.random() * 100 + 1.

Answer 1

Sure it is possible. Make a random 1-100. If the number is <30 then generate number in range 1-100 if not generate in range 40-60.

Answer 2

You can use a helper random number to whether generate random numbers in 40-60 or 1-100:

// 90% of random numbers should be between 40 to 60.
var weight_percentage = 90;

var focuse_on_center = ( (Math.random() * 100) < weight_percentage );

if(focuse_on_center)
{
	// generate a random number within the 40-60 range.
	alert (40 + Math.random() * 20 + 1);
}
else
{
	// generate a random number within the 1-100 range.
	alert (Math.random() * 100 + 1);
}

Answer 3

Taking arrays of numbers, etc. isn't efficient. You should take a mapping which takes a random number between 0 to 100 and maps to the distribution you need. So in your case, you could take f(x)=-(1/25)x2+4x to get a distribution with the most values in the middle of your range.

Answer 4

The simplest way would be to generate two random numbers from 0-50 and add them together.

This gives a distribution biased towards 50, in the same way rolling two dice biases towards 7.

In fact, by using a larger number of "dice" (as @Falco suggests), you can make a closer approximation to a bell-curve:

function weightedRandom(max, numDice) {
    var num = 0;
    for (var i = 0; i < numDice; i++) {
        num += Math.random() * (max/numDice);
    }    
    return num;
}

JSFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/797qhcza/1/

Answer 5

There is a lot of different ways to generate such random numbers. One way to do it is to compute the sum of multiple uniformly random numbers. How many random numbers you sum and what their range is will determine how the final distribution will look.

The more numbers you sum up, the more it will be biased towards the center. Using the sum of 1 random number was already proposed in your question, but as you notice is not biased towards the center of the range. Other answers have propose using the sum of 2 random numbers or the sum of 3 random numbers.

You can get even more bias towards the center of the range by taking the sum of more random numbers. At the extreme you could take the sum of 99 random numbers which each were either 0 or 1. That would be a binomial distribution. (Binomial distributions can in some sense be seen as the discrete version of normal distributions). This can still in theory cover the full range, but it has so much bias towards the center that you should never expect to see it reach the endpoints.

This approach means you can tweak just how much bias you want.

Answer 6

Here's a weighted solution at 3/4 40-60 and 1/4 outside that range.

function weighted() {

  var w = 4;

  // number 1 to w
  var r = Math.floor(Math.random() * w) + 1;

  if (r === 1) { // 1/w goes to outside 40-60
    var n = Math.floor(Math.random() * 80) + 1;
    if (n >= 40 && n <= 60) n += 40;
    return n
  }
  // w-1/w goes to 40-60 range.
  return Math.floor(Math.random() * 21) + 40;
}

function test() {
  var counts = [];

  for (var i = 0; i < 2000; i++) {
    var n = weighted();
    if (!counts[n]) counts[n] = 0;
    counts[n] ++;
  }
  var output = document.getElementById('output');
  var o = "";
  for (var i = 1; i <= 100; i++) {
    o += i + " - " + (counts[i] | 0) + "\n";
  }
  output.innerHTML = o;
}

test();

<pre id="output"></pre>