Steven D'Aprano <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Me too. Although Alex Martelli's algorithm: > > map([random.randrange(5) for i in xrange(45)].count, xrange(5)) > > (each value needs adjusting up by one) really boggles my brain. I'm going > to have to think about that.
Heh, that is woefully inefficient, but it is cute! I must have missed Alex's post where it appeared. Basically you are taking five buckets and 45 marbles. For each marble, choose one of the buckets at random and throw the marble into the bucket you chose. When you're done, count how many marbles have ended up in each bucket. Alex's algorithm does it the hard way: for each bucket selection, write down the result in a list. Then scan through the list to count how many 0's there are, then scan again to see how many 1's there are, etc. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
