I may have misunderstood your suggestion, but it seems to me like your method would always keep elements in each group together. They'd be shuffled with respect to each other, but in a continuous block. To get them to migrate and intermingle, you'd want to split each group in half and shuffle the half-size groups, then shuffle the members of (not-half-size) groups.

I think MJD's objection to the generator is that, if you're shuffling 100,000 elements, you need a generator that can give you a random number between 1 and 100,000. If your generator doesn't have that, you can start with two random numbers, and use them as separate seeds. Each time you need a big random number, you get two small ones (which also become your two new seeds). You combine the two small random numbers into one big random number.

You can do tricks (skip a number occasionally) to keep them from having synchronized repetitions, and you can vary your method of combining them, to help eliminate patterns.

Caution: Contents may have been coded under pressure.

In reply to Re: Random Math Question by Roy Johnson
in thread Random Math Question by Limbic~Region

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