How to create random binary/boolean variable in Netlogo

Question

I'd like to assign a random boolean variable to each turtle, but I'm not seeing a function that would simulate a draw from a Bernoulli distribution.

This gets close, but it's awkward:

ifelse random-in-range 0 1 < .5 [set expensive? false]
[ set expensive? true ]

Anyone know a better way?

Answer 1

A few options:

• one-of [ true false ]

• random 2 = 1

• random-float 1 < 0.5 - If you need to modify the probability, to get any Bernoulli distribution you want

If I deal with a lot of probabilistic stuff in a model, I like to add

to-report probability [ p ]
  report random-float 1 < p
end

as an easy shorthand.

Also, note that the ifelse is redundant in your code. You can just do set expensive? one-of [ true false ] or whichever is your preferred method.