Hi why not shuffle your values by
x <- 1:60 x <- sample(x, 60) and then add groups groups <- rep(paste("g",1:3, sep=""), each=20) If you want you can suffle also groups. Regards Petr > -----Original Message----- > From: r-help-boun...@r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces@r- > project.org] On Behalf Of David A. Kim > Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2012 6:17 AM > To: r-help@r-project.org > Subject: [R] Iterative sampling with restrictions > > Hi all, > > I'm working on a seemingly trivial problem that I can't figure out how > to implement in R. I'd be most grateful for any help here. > > I want to do the following: first, randomly assign each of n units to > one of g groups of size n/g. Then, randomly re-assign each of the n > units to a different group (i.e., same as the first step, but the unit > can't be assigned to a group to which it's already belonged). Then > repeat this step until each unit has at some point been assigned to > every group. > > More concretely, say I have 60 units and 3 groups into which to divide > the units. I could first do something like: > > group1<-sample(1:60,20) > group2<-sample(setdiff(1:60,group1),20) > group3<-sample(setdiff(1:60,c(group1,group2)),20) > > But then how to randomly re-assign group membership such that all units > are assured a different group assignment in the second "wave" of > grouping? Just narrowing the sampling pool to those units that weren't > previously assigned to a given group won't work (consider the case > where groups 1 and 2 swap units: in the second wave, there would be no > units to assign to group 3 as all the remaining units had already been > in group 3 in the first wave). > > Most grateful for any assistance, > > David > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting- > guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.