Xtykutl

Trying to assign appropriate value to 'x' that would result in random integers between 1 to 60. Any suggestions? I did 'randn' but am getting small numbers over and over. Here's the code so far:

function s = Q11sub1(x)



x = 



if x <= 30      



s = "small";



elseif x > 30 & x <= 50 



 s = "medium";



 else



s = "high";



end



end

Use randi:

randi(60)

This will give you a pseudorandom integer between 1 to 60.

Reference: https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/randi.html

The problem is randn generates random numbers that follow a standard Normal distribution, e.g. Normal(mu = 0, std = 1).

As @Banghua Zhao points out, you want the randi function and I'll add they will be uniformly distributed across the integers (inclusively) between those integer bounds (known as the discrete uniform distribution).

The code X = randi([a b],N,M) will generate a NxM matrix of integers uniformly distributed on the interval [a,b] inclusively. A call randi(Imax) defaults the lower bound to 1.

See the difference below.

N = 500;    % Number of samples

a = 1;      % Lower integer bound

b = 60;     % Upper integer bound



X = randi([a b],N,1);   % Random integers between [a,b]

Y = randn(N,1);



figure, hold on, box on

histogram(X)

histogram(Y)

legend('randi[1,60]','randn','Location','southeast')

xlabel('Result')

ylabel('Observed Frequency')

title({'randi([a b],N,1) vs randn(N,1)';'N = 500'})

EDIT: At @Max's suggestion, I've added 60*randn.

W = 60*randn(N,1);     



figure, hold on, box on

hx = histogram(X,'Normalization','pdf')

hw = histogram(W,'Normalization','pdf')

legend('randi[1,60]','60*randn','Location','southeast')

xlabel('Result')

ylabel('Observed Estimated Density')

title({'randi([a b],N,1) vs 60*randn(N,1)';['N = ' num2str(N)]})