You are a trooper Dan.
That was one of the first things I noticed between the code example in help, and the code examples that I saw others post.
I just tried it again anyway, with not success. I even got rid of defining the distribution. Current code block is:
import arcpy
# Calculate a random number using the arcgis.rand() function
result = arcpy.CalculateValue_management("arcgis.rand('normal 0.0 10.0')")
# Get the value from the result object from CalculateValue and print
val = float(result.getOutput[0])
print val
Expression is:
val(!Rand2!)
I had to move on, so I generated a random table of values on Random.org's website, pasted into excel, joined the excel file, and used field calculator to copy the random values. That's a lot of work for what should be a simple code.
Of course I wouldn't spend so much time if I didn't think this was going to helpful to me in the future.
Therefore, i would greatly appreciate any attempts to find a fix.
Thanks a lot.
Rich