Am I missing something here? I am writing a game that requires some random number generation. I decided to use the System.Random class but I was getting strange results. The documentation says that if I have an instance of the class (let's call it r), the call
r.Next(1,6)
returns a random number in the range [1,6]. I always check random functions of this sort to ensure the accuracy of the "randomness". In this case I created a simple form with one button and the following code:
Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
Dim r As New System.Random
Dim i, j As Integer
Dim counts() As Integer = {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}
Randomize()
For i = 1 To 100000
j = r.Next(1, 6)
counts(j) += 1
Next
For i = 0 To 6
Debug.WriteLine(i.ToString() & " = " & counts(i).ToString())
Next
End SubThis is the output that results:
0 = 0
1 = 19981
2 = 19950
3 = 20020
4 = 20041
5 = 20008
6 = 0
Clearly, the random numbers generated do not include the maxvalue (6) as stated in the intellisense popup. Am I missing something here? There is a famous quote that goes "the generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance". If I am not missing something, and the random number generator is faulty then this is a giant oops on someone's part.
This is the actual text from the intellisense popup:
Public Overridable Function Next(minValue As Integer, maxValue As Integer) As Integer
Returns a random number within a specified range.
