[per] > i realize my example in the original post was misleading. i dont want > to maximize the difference between individual members of a single > tuple -- i want to maximize the difference between distinct tuples. in > other words, it's ok to have (.332, .334, .38), as long as the other > tuple is, say, (.52, .6, .9) which is very difference from (.332, . > 334, .38). i want the member of a given tuple to be arbitrary, e.g. > something like (rand(), rand(), rand()) but that the tuples be very > different from each other.
No problem, just define a predicate that formalizes what you mean by "very different from each other". def generate_very_different_random_tuples(n): selected = set() for i in range(n): t = rand(), rand(), rand() while any(not very_different(t, s) for s in selected): t = rand(), rand(), rand() selected.add(t) return list(selected) Raymond -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list