On 2017-05-16, at 16:46, Richard Kuebbing wrote: > Fantastic. This looks to be the level of brilliance I was looking for - > simplicity plus 100% solution. > > So follow-up question. I have a lot of advanced math in grad school, all > inapplicable to this. Is there any kind of measure of how "random" a set of > numbers is? Someone internal is bound to ask. I am thinking of graphing the > difference [=n(i+1)-n(i)] and looking at distribution. The client(s) are > business persons and are unlikely to ask. > Do *not* look up "Kolmogorov complexity" on the Internet.
I would say that Melvyn's approach and mine are equivalent. Both generate a decision tree with N! leaves, one for each permutation, which are equally probable subject to the quality of your random number generator. The best you can do is to expect all outcomes to be equally likely. It's harder to prove the same for Peter's approach (or Charles's) unless you prohibit duplicate keys. > Question 2: I have a passion for documenting things. Do you wish to have > your name attached to this idea? -- gil
