Re: Processing numbers in random order

In Message-ID:<47685e04$0$5200$afc38c87@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Phil" <obrienpw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Maybe #2 was not thought through... but why is #1 incorrect?

Is it not possible to be at index 10 and request a random number from 1-10
and end up swapping 10 with 10?

Yes it should be. However, your change limited it to
swapping with a random number (actually a random location) from
1-9, not 1-10.

Or, are you suggesting that swapping 10 with 10 should never
happen? In that case, as I said, you'll *never* have location 10
have value 10. So, if you had to guess what number was in
location 10, you'd have an 11+% chance of being right instead of
only a 10% chance. Similarly, a game of War between an unshuffled
deck and one shuffled with your #1 would never have a War during
the first run-through.

You could check to see if you're swapping a location with
itself and do nothing. I suspect that it wouldn't speed things up
because you'd do the check many more times than you'd prevent a
"do nothing" swap.

--
Arthur T. - ar23hur "at" intergate "dot" com
Looking for a z/OS (IBM mainframe) systems programmer position
.

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