title: Generating a gaussian distribution with only positive numbers
body: <p>Is there any way to randomly generate a set of positive numbers such that they have a desired mean and standard deviation?  </p>
  
  <p>I have an algorithm to generate numbers with a gaussian distribution, but I don't know how to deal with negative numbers in a way the preserves the mean and standard deviation.<br>
  It looks like a poisson distribution might be a good approximation, but it takes only a mean.</p>
  
  <p>EDIT: There's been some confusion in the responses so I'll try to clarify. </p>
  
  <p>I have a set of numbers that give me a mean and a standard deviation. I would like to generate an equally sized set of numbers with an equivalent mean and standard deviation. Normally, I would use a gaussian distribution to do this, however in this case I have an additional constraint that all values must be greater than zero.  </p>
  
  <p>The algorithm I'm looking for doesn't need to be gaussian-based (judging by the comments so far, it probably shouldn't be) and doesn't need to be perfect. It doesn't matter if the resulting number set has a slightly different mean/standard deviation -- I just want something that will usually be in the ballpark.</p>