In article <048001c2f5e4$929b6000$0300a8c0 / austin.rr.com>,
Hal E. Fulton <hal9000 / hypermetrics.com> wrote:
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Phil Tomson" <ptkwt / shell1.aracnet.com>
>Newsgroups: comp.lang.ruby
>To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk / ruby-lang.org>
>Sent: Saturday, March 29, 2003 1:44 AM
>Subject: Re: Weighted random selection -- how would you do this?
>
>
>> You're talking about some kind of proportional selection scheme (hey, you
>> wouldn't happen to be working on Genetic Algorithms, would you?).
>
>Not at the moment, but I've certainly had that in the
>back of my mind for some time. Are you interested in
>GAs? I am, but I'm not knowledgeable yet.

I just finished up a GA class.  It was one of the most interesting classes 
I've taken.

>
>> One way
>> would be to do what's called roulette wheel selection.  You can visualize
>> a roulette wheel where each number is sized proportionally to the weight.
>> The bigger the weight, the more likely the 'roulette wheel' is to land on
>> that item.
>>
>> It would look something like:
>
>[snip]
>
>Fascinating and clever. But I'll probably
>go with a lighter-weight solution.
>

Yes, the lighter-weight solution definately is faster, but how it works is 
not obvious to me either.

Phil