Question

I am trying to create a function, that will always total the mx variable, in the code:

(function () {
    var i = 0;
    var j;
    var mn = 1;
    var mx = 579;

    while (i < mx) {
        j = Math.floor(Math.random() * (mx - mn + 1)) + mn;
        mx = mx - i;
        i += j;

        if (i < (mx - j)) {
            console.log(i);
        } else {
            console.log(mx);
        }
    }
})();

So if mx = 999 then the console may log 900, 90 and 9 or if mx = 50 the console could log 4, 1, 10, 33 and 2.

This happens most of the time, but every now-and-again I get numbers that equal greater than mx and I can’t for the life of me figure out why!

I’d be very grateful for any help, pointers or direction! As I’d like to lean where I went wrong, an explanation would be really awesome too!

Thank you!

Answer 1

I’m not sure I’m interpreting your problem correctly, but you seem to want to “break up” a number into random numbers which add up to the initial value (579).

If so, I think you’re doing it a little bit incorrectly: you;re both substracting i from max and adding j to i. Thus, i becomes larger each time.

It looks like your algorithm can be simplified.

Edit: I gave it another shot so that the numbers are (as far as I’m concerned) more uniformly distributed. I also renamed the variables for clarity:

(function () {
    var total = 0,
        current,
        min = 1,
        max = 579;

    while (total < max) { // while the total has not reached max yet
        current = Math.floor(Math.random() * (max - min + 1)) + min;

        if(total + current > max) { // if total would become too high
            current = max - total;  // set current such that total becomes max
        }

        total += current;

        console.log(current);
    }
})();