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RANDOM WALK LINE

JAVASCRIPT SERIES
In the program below, a fifty step random walk is taken on a number line, starting at position x=0. Each step is either a positive step (+1) or a negative step (-1). At the end of 50 steps, the walk is finished and the tally for the final position of the walker is incremented.

Pressing "1 walk" shows the building of the distribution, adding the results one walk at a time. For faster results, other buttons allow processing 50, 1000, or 5000 walks.




-15

0
-14

0
-13

0
-12

0
-11

0
-10

0
-9

0
-8

0
-7

0
-6

0
-5

0
-4

0
-3

0
-2

0
-1

0
0

0
+1

0
+2

0
+3

0
+4

0
+5

0
+6

0
+7

0
+8

0
+9

0
+10

0
+11

0
+12

0
+13

0
+14

0
+15

0


Each random walk takes 50 steps.

The entire table can be pasted into Microsoft Excel for the preparation of a graph (Chart Wizard).

A distribution of 1000 walks is shown below:



The distribution of 5000 walks below has a similar shape:



The above data fits to a Gaussian Distribution.