On Mon, 04 Aug 2008 22:28:59 GMT, Lars-Åke Aspelin
wrote:

On Mon, 4 Aug 2008 12:30:14 -0700, Okstate_Fan131313
wrote:

I'm trying to find a way to randomly choose a number within a given range but
have a given frequency for each random number.

For example.

Range: 1-5

Frequency of appearance:

1=5%
2=10%
3=30%
4=50%
5=5%

I was trying to find a way using the random function with upper & lower
bounds but wasn't sure how in incorporate the "frequency of appearance"
factor.

Any and all help is greatly appreciated,

Thanks.




Try the following formula to get a random number from 1 to 5 with the
frequencies stated above:

=MAX((RAND(){0,0.05,0.15,0.45,0.95})*{1,2,3,4,5} )

Note that the numbers in the first array are the cumulative
frequencies.

Hope this helps / Lars-Åke


And for the unlikely event that RAND() should return exactly 0, the
formula should rather be like

=MAX((RAND()={0,0.05,0.15,0.45,0.95})*{1,2,3,4,5} )

Lars-Åke