How to create random number between (0....1]?

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chan
chan on 17 Aug 2021
Commented: Walter Roberson on 19 Aug 2021
Could someone suggest me how to create random numbers between (0....1]?

Answers (2)

KSSV
KSSV on 17 Aug 2021
Read about rand.
iwant = rand(1,10)
iwant = 1×10
0.3795 0.0287 0.4453 0.7789 0.3209 0.6367 0.2754 0.1285 0.6886 0.7143
  5 Comments
KSSV
KSSV on 19 Aug 2021
You put a condition that 1 should be included, so 1 is added...later the number are made random using randsample. You can give a try generating 6 random numbers with 1, you will not get it.
Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson on 19 Aug 2021
The user wants to generate from uniform random distribution of floating point numbers in which the source distribution excludes 0 but includes 1, with the possibility of 1 to have equal probability with any other possible output.
The user did not actually state how dense they need the distribution to be. If they would be happy with 2^52 or fewer numbers in the source set, then the calculations can be done fairly easily making use of randi.
If the user wants more 2^53*values in the source set, then it would be necessary to switch to a different representation, not ieee 754 double precision.
If the user wants 2^53 values in the source set, that is possible with a small bit of indirection.
The most commonly used uniform random number generator in MATLAB generates from a source set that is 2^53 - 1 values, one value fewer than is ideal for their needs .

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Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson on 19 Aug 2021
This takes work to get right.
format long g
N = 6;
temp = typecast(reshape([randi([0 (2^8-1)], 6, N, 'uint8'); randi([0 (2^5-1)], 1, N); zeros(1, N,'uint8')],[],1),'uint64')
temp = 6×1
6216815486836182 5783593910339116 5332195457436175 6764184342683364 8586546077226935 7892688937955983
iwant = double(temp) / flintmax;
iwant(iwant == 0) = 1
iwant = 6×1
0.690205169333178 0.642107912434033 0.591992616864731 0.750975320005605 0.953298115694216 0.876264498512301
You cannot use rand() because rand() excludes 0 and 1.
You cannot [directly] use randi() because randi has a maximum span of 2^53 - 2
So... what we do is generate a 53 bit binary number and pack it together into a uint64. A 53 bit binary number has 2^53 different possible values, from 0 to 2^53 - 1. We can double() the value because all integers 0 to 2^53 are directly representable in double precision. Then we divide by 2^53 to scale to 0 to (2^53-1)/2^53 . We then check for 0 and if we see it we substitute 1. So now we have a range of 2^53 different numbers that excludes 0 and includes 1.

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