CODEWITHSUNDEEP
probability
OnePunchFail
OnePunchFail

Reputation: 9

Understanding this discrete distribution issue.

Hello I am reading the book about programming in java and I found one issue which I cannot understand. The question is like this:

Write a program DiscreteDistribution.java that takes a variable number of integer command-line arguments and prints the integer i with probability proportional to the ith command-line argument.

I have no clue what this i with probability proportinoal to the ith command-line argument. Can someone help me understand it? Thanks so much.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 226

Answers (1)

Harper
Harper

Reputation: 1954

Your program should accept a list of integers as input parameter. E.g.

<program> 1 4 5 3 7
<program> 5 4 2 8 9 0 1

are all valid inputs. Let's call the parameters A. A[x] is the x-th parameter.

Then you should print one single number i with the following probability.

P(i) = A[i] / sum(A[x])

Take the first input as example.

P(0) = 1 / 20
P(1) = 4 / 20
P(2) = 5 / 20
P(3) = 3 / 20
P(4) = 7 / 20

Upvotes: 1

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