At 08:50 AM 9/30/02 -0800, Shareef Siddeek wrote:
>Hi Glen,
>Thank you for your advice. In fact I new that I should use the uniform
>distribution to select the random value. But for some reason or other, my
>brain did not figure out on that day that whether I should use a discrete or a
>continuous random number function to select the integer values. It looks like
>I could use either one. Cheers. Siddeek
perhaps i don't get it but, if you want a discrete variable ... does that
not eliminate the notion of it being continuous?
a continuous variable is one where ANY value from A to B ... is possible
and in the realm of being sampled but, not so for a discrete variable
this just does not seem like a problem to me ... if i want to sample 20 or
10,000 values from a DISCRETE random variable where admissible values are
say ... 10 to 20 ... minitab could do this easily (uses an "integer"
generating function) like:
MTB > rand 20 c1;
SUBC> integer 10 20.
MTB > prin c1
Data Display
C1
15 20 20 15 15 20 17 18 18 15
15 13 10 15 17 18 18 19 13 15
MTB > rand 10000 c2;
SUBC> integer 10 20.
MTB > tall c1 c2
Tally for Discrete Variables: C1, C2
C1 Count C2 Count
10 1 10 941
13 2 11 882
15 7 12 959
17 2 13 912
18 4 14 904
19 1 15 901
20 3 16 933
N= 20 17 907
18 927
19 876
20 858
N= 10000
.
.
=================================================================
Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the
problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at:
. http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ .
=================================================================
