Can I assign probabilities to events in Java?

[stonecoldgen]

Hello.

So I'm wondering if there is a way to assign a probability to a certain event in the code.

Let's say that I want a certain arithmetic operation to have an 80% chance of happening (and make an if/else if statement based on that, or something similar...)

Is there something in the java language that can help me? or should I just create an algorithm to do it?

Thanks a lot.

 

[chiro]

Hey stonecoldgen.

Although computers are engineered to always perform an instruction and get the right output pretty much 100% of the time, what you can do is use a good random number generator to simulate the random behaviour: it won't be purely random but it should be good enough.

So what you can actually do is have two options: the output of not doing something and the output of your arithmetic operation occurring. So in pseudo-code:

randomnumber = generate_uniform_random_number_between_0_and_1();

if (randomnnumber < 0.8)
   do_arithmetic_operation();
else
   dont_do_arithmetic_operation_or_something_else();
end if

You can implement other stuff the same kind of way.