Question

So, I have a problem. Basically, I didn’t pay enough attention in high school math, and now I’m stuck. I need to generate random numbers between 1 adn 20 with a heavy emphasis on the one between 1 and 5, a light emphasis on 5-10, and a low emphasis on 10-20. I don’t understand all the fancy probability words and all the stuff they say in the articles I’ve come across. Any help you guys can provide would be appreciated. Thanks!

Answer 1

You can use this formula to generate a random number in the range [low, high]:

var randomNumber:int = Math.floor(Math.random()*(1+high-low))+low;

You can put that in a function if you want.

Now, an easy way to have a different probability for the three intervals you provided, is to do something like this:

var random:Number = Math.random();
if (random < 0.75) {
    // generate random number in [1, 5]
} else if (random < 0.95) {
    // generate random number in [6, 10]
} else {
    // generate random number in [11, 20]
}