Francesco Pozzi

I've tried this small experiment:

N = 100000; % sample size
w = 1:100; % quite steep distribution
w = w / sum(w); % distribution (pdf)
Y_std = sqrt(w .* (1 - w)); % Standard deviations associated to each probability

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Y1 = randp(w, N, 1); % Try Jos function
Y1_w = histc(Y1, [1:100]); % absolute frequencies table
Y1_w = Y1_w / N; % transform into relative frequencies
Y1_w_std = sqrt(Y1_w .* (1 - Y1_w)); % Empirical standard deviations associated to each probability

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Y2 = gDiscrPdfRnd(w, N, 1); % Try Gianluca Dorini's function
Y2_w = histc(Y2, [1:100]); % absolute frequencies table
Y2_w = Y2_w / N; % transform into relative frequencies
Y2_w_std = sqrt(Y2_w .* (1 - Y2_w)); % Empirical standard deviations associated to each probability

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% Check if empirical standard deviations are coherent with theretical ones
plot(Y_std - Y1_w_std', '.b') % plot empirical differences for Jos function
hold on
plot(Y_std - Y2_w_std', '.r') % plot empirical differences for Gianluca Dorini's function

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It looks as though both functions statistically behave very well. They are both excellent functions. Thank you.

Wow, it really is a nice function, very fast and efficient. It is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you.

Sorry about that. Yes, you need the Statistics Toolbox, I forgot to mention it. Thank you for reminding. I ignore if percentiles can be computed efficiently otherwise.

??? Undefined function or method 'prctile' for input arguments of type
'double'.

Error in ==> corrperc at 201
  corrsperc = prctile(corrs_temp, perc)';