NetLogo not creating turtles in random intervals - netlogo

Question

I'm trying to create a procedure in NetLogo to create a turtle agent every 0-60 seconds. Using the following code and then running the procedure in a loop, it appears that the random generator is not working. The graph plot (agents to ticks) is linear.
to go
every random 60 [crt 1 [
set xcor random 20 - 10
set ycor random 20 - 10
]
]
plot count turtles
end
But if I were to do:
to go
every 2 [crt 1 [
set xcor random 20 - 10
set ycor random 20 - 10
]
]
plot count turtles
end
It seems to work as expected. Every 2 seconds a new turtle gets created.
Am I doing something wrong?

Answer 1

Here is an idea, don't keep regenerating a new random number every time, regenerate it after the timer is reached. Code:
globals [t]
to setup
set t random 60
end
to go
every t [
set t random 60
crt 1 [
set xcor random 20 - 10
set ycor random 20 - 10
]
]
end
I haven't tested it, but it should address the issue that Jose brought up.

Answer 2

Your first bit of code is doing what its supposed to, which is creating a turtle almost every instant.
This might not be intuitive but notice that the 'go' is getting called thousands of time per second (depending on your machine speed). Every time it is called it generates a new random number between 0 and 60. So, there is a really high probability that it will generate the number 0. If so, then it creates a turtle at that moment.
As an example, run this code from a 'forever' button and see what it prints out:
to go
every random 60 [
show timer ;shows how long its been since last reset-timer
reset-timer
]
end
I get:
observer: 0.016
observer: 0.0060
observer: 0.016
observer: 0
observer: 0
observer: 0
observer: 0.0050
observer: 0
observer: 0
observer: 0
on my laptop.