Question

Say I’m pseudo-randomly picking a number from 1 to 50 every second for 100 seconds, and as time goes on the number picked is more likely to be greater. How could I structure such an algorithm?

For example: after 99 seconds the probability of choosing a number closer to 50 is much more likely than choosing a number closer to 1.

Or: the number picked after 10 seconds is more likely to be greater than the number picked after 9 seconds

Answer 1

I have a simple solution for you. Instead of rand(1, 50) (say this function generates uniformly random numbers 1..50) use this expression:

power(rand(1, power(50, exp)), 1/exp)

this will still give you all the numbers 1..50. For exp = 1, the distribution will be uniform. As you slightly increase exp (e.g. like 1.1 or so), the probability of getting larger numbers will increase. The higher the exp, the more it will increase towards 50.

So you can do e.g.:

factor = 1 /* finetune this for your needs */
for second = 0..100
    exp = 1 + (second / 100) * factor
    rand_num = power(rand(1, power(50, exp)), 1/exp)
endfor