Random number functions

[Daniel_Robbins]

Perhaps I’m missing it, but how do I generate random numbers? I am missing “randbetween” and “rnd” from Excel.
Thanks for any and all help.

[Katherine_Duh]

We don’t have any random number functions at the moment, but I’ll reach out to you once we implement something like this. Can you share why you need a random number function? We might be able to provide a workaround.

[Daniel_Robbins]

I use Airtable to generate sample data for prototyping/mocking up a series of applications my company is developing. I often want to have sample data that represents a meaningful distribution across a set of values. In the past I either used Excel or https://www.mockaroo.com/

It’d be great to just use one tool.

[prem]

Am also missing a Random function,

• which would take a Random Seed.
• Allow negative to positive range
• Allow fractions

Looking for a random function something like:
RANDOM()
RANDOM(Seed)
RANDOM(Seed, Range_Start, Range_End, Fraction_Digits)

use 0 to ignore seed
range start/end, either or both, could be negative.
fraction digits, for number of fraction digits in output

RANDOM(0,0,200) => 74 (0 for ignore seed, no fractional digits)

RANDOM(8495,-200,-100,5) => -158.78304 (8495 for seed, negative start and end, with 5 fractional digits)

RANDOM(8495,200,-100,5) => 158.78304 (8495 for seed, with 5 fractional digits, where start is higher than end)

RANDOM(VALUE(DATETIME_FORMAT(NOW(), ‘x’)),1000,2000,7) => 1622.9287305 (use current datetime to seed, with 7 fraction digits)

[Ron_Sheridan]

I am looking for a RANDOM Sort capability. I am building a table of Questions to be entered into an app and I want to randomize the questions before they are manually entered or imported.

[Tuur]

@Ron_Sheridan if you have any input at all when it comes to development of that app, it would probably be a couple of minutes work for the programmer to shuffle the questions over there before they are shown. :slightly_smiling_face:

[Daniel_Robbins]

PING. Any update on getting random number generator?

[Tuur]

Hey @Daniel_Robbins, I thought of something.

If you create a formula with VALUE(RECORD_ID()) you’ll get random numbers for each record. Maybe you can use this a a starting point. With some additional formulas (or even rollups) you should be able to scale it / put it in a certain range.

:slightly_smiling_face:

[Daniel_Robbins]

Thanks. I’ll try that.

[Tuur]

You could actually expand that by using the CREATED_TIME() function too.

Grab the numbers from the time portion…

SUBSTITUTE(TIMESTR(CREATED_TIME()), ":", "")

Or only the seconds for example and use that to do an extra calculation, define a random position in the string (maybe with REPT) or whatever.