this conforms to what you were talking about. gets flakier the closer avg gets to min || max. comments?
#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use Data::Dumper;

my ($acceptable_laziness) = 1.0e-15;

sub rand_list {
  my ($howmany, $min, $max, $avg, @a) = (@_, ());
  print STDERR "ERROR: Make sure (min < avg < max)\n", return if ($avg
+ <= $min || $avg >= $max);
  push @a, rand($max-$min)+$min for 1..$howmany;

  # nudge list toward avg w/o pushing numbers above/below min/max
  while (avg_list(@a) != $avg){
    my ($nudge, $tmp) = (avg_list(@a)-$avg, undef);
    last if (abs $nudge < $acceptable_laziness);
    for (@a){
      $tmp = ($_ - $nudge);
      $_ = $tmp if ($min <= $tmp && $max >= $tmp);
    }
  }
  @a;
}

sub avg_list {
  my ($c, $t) = (0, 0);
  $t+=pop, $c++ while @_;
  ($t / $c) if $c
}

# 20 nums between 1 and 5 that average to 3
my @b = rand_list(20, 1, 5, 3);
print Dumper(\@b);

[download]
perl -e'@a=split//," \n/)\"={\"";print $a[$_] for split//,"00002731000223155264555102401"'

In reply to Re: list of random numbers with given avarage by pizza_milkshake
in thread list of random numbers with given avarage by LupoX

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