Biased Random Value From Array With PHP

10th March 2008 - 1 minute read time

Note: This post is over a year old and so the information contained here might be out of date. If you do spot something please leave a comment and I will endeavour to correct.

Sometimes you will want to get a random value form an array in a biased random way, that is, you will want certain values to be returned more than others. Here is a function that will generate a single key from an array, with a greater change of a higher value being retrieved.

function biasedRandom($numbers){
 $total = 0;
 foreach($numbers as $number=>$weight){
  $total += $weight;
  $distribution[$number] = $total;
 };
 $rand = mt_rand(0,$total-1);
 foreach($distribution as $number=>$weights){
  if($rand<$weights){
   return $number;
  };
 };
}

This function is used in the following way.

//set up array
$array = array('one'=>100,
 'two'=>100,
 'three'=>100,
 'four'=>500);
 
// get biased random number
echo biasedRandom($array);

The key that is generated the most by the function is four because it has a higher value than the rest and will therefore 'weigh' a lot more.

PHP

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