In Short: I want to give a formula the X coordinate and get the Y coordinate from matching a bell curve. Is this possible?
In Detail: I'm trying to program a market simulation and to get a product's "desirability" I'd like to use a bell curve. (This is a math question, trust me!)
When I graphed two S-Curves (one mirrored), I basically had a pointy bell curve. In this graph, X is 'how much' (price and quality) something is, from 1-100, from low-price & low-quality to high-price & high-quality. Y is the 'desire' consumers have for the product based on price vs quality. Y's values are a variables that will change, X's values will always be the same. One will not become thirty, and there's always the same total points.
What I'm wanting to do is plug in to a "magic formula" X (price vs quality) and get Y (desirability), based on a bell curve and the numbers I feed it to adjust the curve itself.
It seems like bell curves only give you points away from the median or percents around the curve. I've searched and searched, but turned up nothing on how to get the coordinates (x,y) on points of a bell curve. Any help would be appreciated.
I'm about to just fake the whole thing and have two arrays of numbers, and then adjust the second set to meet changing markets. I really want to use a bell curve because it's so simple and dynamic compared to fudging the whole thing.