Basically, I implemented a Random walk program in Java. And I know the distance should converge to l * (n ^ 0.5)(l is the step length, n is the total steps). If let l equals to 1, then d = n ^ 0.5 or in other words: d = sqrt(n).
But, strangly, although I cannot find any error in my code, it just converges to unexpected value. For example, given l = 1, n = 100, d should converge to 10, but actually it converges to 8.86 after 1000000 times experiments.
Here is my code:
public class RandomWalk {
private int x = 0;
private int y = 0;
private final Random random = new Random();
private void move(int dx, int dy) {
x += dx;
y += dy;
}
private void randomWalk(int m) {
for (int i = 0; i < m; i++)
randomMove();
}
private void randomMove() {
boolean xOry = random.nextBoolean();
boolean plusOrminus = random.nextBoolean();
int delta = plusOrminus ? 1 : -1;
int dx = xOry ? delta : 0, dy = xOry ? 0 : delta;
move(dx, dy);
}
public double distance() {
return Math.sqrt(Math.pow(x, 2) + Math.pow(y, 2));
}
public static double randomWalkMulti(int m, int n) {
double totalDistance = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++){
RandomWalk walk = new RandomWalk();
walk.randomWalk(m);
totalDistance += walk.distance();
}
return totalDistance/n ;
}
}
I've thought some possiblities. First I think it may be caused by that the generated boolean by random has bias. Second I think it may be caused by float precision lost. But as this is just a very simple use case, I don't think these two situations are possible.
Could any one tell me why it doesn't work as expected?
