Random Numbers

Generating Random Numbers

JavaScript has a fun function called Math.random(). It will generate some crazy decimal between 0 and 1. That’s cool, but what if we want to get a number between 1 and 3?

Elementary! Multiply it by three!

Hmm… That’s still not getting us all the way there. Here are a few numbers that I generated.

• 0.983854177263559
• 1.2686074516508812
• 2.8046332459732235
• 2.249551404129546
• 2.573826382472637
• 2.224357980788116
• 1.2507436439851465
• 1.9703391399107906
• 2.48614382491825

They are between 0 and just under 3. We need to add one and then round down. Math.floor() will round the number down.

 Math.floor(2.48614382491825) === 2; // true!

So, what happens if we do Math.floor(Math.random() * 3 + 1)?

• 2
• 3
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 1
• 3
• 2

We did it! 🎉

More here: MDN Docs Math.random()