How to retrieve a row, biased by populatity?

[Praveen Chakravarthula]

* Pick a random number between 0 .. 1 from a non-linear distribution,
multiply it by the total number of rows.
* SELECT stuff FROM table ORDER BY weight LIMIT rand, 1


On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 9:22 PM, Dave Hodgkinson <davehodg at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Possibly a perl question. SQL would do...
>
> Given a set of data, say bands, with each having a ranking, either a
> review metric or a sales ranking, how would you retrieve a random
> row, but biased towards the higher ranking?
>
>