I was watching a VueJS tutorial and was surprised at what it takes in ECMAscript to generate a random integer between 0 and 10.
Math.floor(Math.random() * 10);
In PHP it takes
mt_rand(0, 10);
In your favorite language what does it take to generate an integer between 0 and 10?
Top comments (48)
const random = 7;
xkcd.com/221/
Pfff, everyone knows
random
is4
not7
.Pfff, you need update your mindset 🤨
Updates just break everything.
How can you know that no consumer of your code assumes it will be
4
?Sure, you claimed it is random, in the "documentation", but it's not like that ever works.
There are probably children out there holding down spacebar to stay warm in the winter! YOUR UPDATE MURDERS CHILDREN.
🤣
You made my day 🤣🤣
Math.random()
produces a randomfloat
(all JavaScript numbers are of typefloat
) from0
to1
.Adding the requirement of 0-10 means you have to multiply by 10 or
* 10
.The last requirement was the number must be an
Integer
, which is themath.floor
.Of course, if you only wanted a random float between
0
and1
, it would be just one call.And in PHP if you wanted a random float between 0 and 1, you would also have to do more work: Random Float between 0 and 1 in PHP
So the complexity actually comes from the requirements you give it.
But asking for a random integer is a common task. So it's handy to create function and keep it in your library. Don't go sprinkling
Math.floor(Math.random() * 10)
randomly around your codebase :DP.S. I prefixed this with
pseudo
because there is no true Random in JavaScript. This is very important when it comes to cryptography. GooglePRNG
if you want to learn more.For a cryptographically strong random value, you might want to look into Crypto.getRandomValues()
Cheers!
I wish PM's understood this more.
There's a bug in your example; if the output is supposed to be
[start, end)
, then the correct implementation is:✌😉
I probably should have run it once. lol.
I gotta stop typing code directly into editors.
Good catch!
There is a subtle bug to consider with your code, though. If you want to guarantee an even spread among the numbers in the set of
[0, 10]
, you'll have problems with10
never showing up in your histogram. The reason for this is that the random value will almost never be exactly1
, as most PRNGs will actually output something in the range of[0, 1)
(note the non-inclusiveness of1
in the return values).To correct that problem, you have to be a little smarter about how you map the
[0,1]
interval to buckets of integers:In the case of
10
, you'll be multiplying a number in the[0,1]
range to something that's just under11
. Number.EPSILON is the smallest float fraction that JavaScript numbers can express, so it's as close as the JavaScript number precision gets. And because the number11
is never a value that appears in the output,Math.floor
will never return anything above10
, guaranteed.Of course, if your PRNG never returns
1
in its output, it's safe to just domax + 1
. :)Here's an illustration:
repl.it/@KrofDrakula/safeRandom
What about using
Math.round()
in place ofMath.floor()
in the original?In that case,
0
and10
would appear with about 50% the frequency of every other element.If you imagine the number line after multiplying by 10, you'll understand what I mean:
This diagram shows you which floats map to which integer with different functions. As you can see, in the case of
Math.round()
,0
has only half the length of every other number, so it would appear half as often. Same goes for10
at the end of the interval:While
10
would appear in the resulting histogram, its frequency would be about half the frequency of every other non-zero integer.FYI, Math.round() is just:
You're effectively just shifting the mapping from floats to integers, but you're not making room for the
max
number. To have even distribution, you must have all intervals of equal length, and all the intervals covered by the scaled random number interval.Also, try out the above repl.it link, you can make your own random functions to see if your hunches are correct. :)
I'm on my smartphone at the moment, but thanks. Your other response makes a lot of sense. That's something I hadn't thought about before.
Typically don't people mean the set of numbers [0, 9] when they say they want a random int between 0 and 10? I would assume they want something out of 10 vs something out of 11
Well that is where your specification definition alarm bells should start ringing like crazy. We don't have a precise mathematical definition for ranges and sets like this in everyday language among lay folk, therefore you have to clarify what you mean. The example I gave above explicitly lays out the expectations, which the original text hadn't.
Technically speaking saying "between 0 and 10" could mean
(0, 10)
,[0, 10]
,(0, 10]
or[0, 10)
. In most conversations I've had, people tend to treat ranges as inclusive, so[0, 10]
would probably be my best guess, but that's just anecdotal evidence on my part, and should always be checked.Going the OG route
Python:
Ruby:
Go:
None of these are cryptographically secure though
Python has a cryptographically secure library called "secrets", which I use a lot :-P
Yeah secrets is very useful and has a clear API
Python has a few options, including the numpy module. Regardless of language, however, it often only takes a ~20 lines to define a pseudo-random (in numerical math we avoid saying "random") number generator method. Here is an implementation of the so-called Mersenne twister:
In this method, we declare two integers, i (16807 = 75), and j (the Mersenne prime). In specifying the arguments n (number of psuedo-random numbers desired), seed (for repeatability of the pseudo-random numbers), and S (min, max, types to be generated), what is repeatedly happening (depending on n) is that we are taking the remainder of (seed * i) and j, and dividing by j; over and over. This implementation of the Mersenne Twister is good for about 230 random numbers before it repeats itself. :)
APL:
I am a beginner in this language but it is fascinating at how succinct and elegant some constructs are.
Others responded on-topic, so I would add an off-topic :)
I do not build a JS project without Lodash (or something similar), it covers the basic needs and lacks of JS, acting like a Standard library in other languages. A few of them are related to random
Devs should be more careful at the distributions, most of the cases the code will be used for a few values and a small range of values, which will lead to very not-so-random results.
If the random results will affect the User Experience you should think twice of using it, the screwed distribution will affect your sales and KPIs in unknown ways, most likely negative, and there are always better alternatives, that require more resources to implement of course.
In PL/SQL:
A random number.
A random round number.
A random number between two values.
From a terminal can be(no for encrypt things):
They see me shuffling. LMFAO