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From: Reinert Korsnes <reinert.korsnes@chello.no>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Discrete random with given distribution ?
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 14:49:45 +0200
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Larry Kilgallen wrote:

> In article <aea288$cen$1@dolly.uninett.no>, Reinert Korsnes
> <reinert.korsnes@chello.no> writes:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> Is it under Ada any "natural" way to generate random
>> elements of enumeration type (for example (a,b,c))
>> and with a given non-uniform probability distribution ?
> 
> If you want truly random data, you need a connection to some physical
> source of randomness, such as thermistor noise.
> 
> If you really meant "pseudo-random", continue the discussion.

Pseudo.  The point this time was to make pretty code - not to be
subtle about random numbers.

reinert

> 
>> I.e. so for example "a" is produced by probability 1/2
>> and "b" and "c" both with probability 1/4 ?
>> 
>> (Yes, I can do it via Float_Random, but the code looks ugly).