Dar, I'm afraid you are wrong… they would not be 27 possibilities (3^3) but only 6 (3! - factorial), because each line (first, second and third) can only be present once.
And I tested random (3) and random (9999) corrected to give a number between 1 and 3 with the following scripts: on mouseUp put "" into fld "FR" repeat 100 put random(3) & comma after fld "FR" end repeat end mouseUp result: 1,3,2,3,1,1,1,3,3,3,3,2,1,2,2,2,1,2,2,3,1,3,2,3,2,2,3,2,2,3,3,2,2,3,1,3,1,3,2,2,1,3,2,1,3,3,2,3… mean value: 1.992 on mouseUp put "" into fld "FR" put 0 into tt repeat 1000 put random(9999) into tx switch case tx <= 3333 put 1 into t break case tx <= 6666 put 2 into t break default put 3 into t end switch add t to tt end repeat put tt/1000 into fld "Moyenne" end mouseUp result: 1,2,3,3,1,3,2,3,3,2,3,2,3,3,2,2,1,1,3,3,2,2,2,1,3,1,3,3,3,3,1,1,3,2,3,1,2,1,1,1,2,1,3,2,3,2,2… mean value: 1.992 so, it seems to be no statistical difference in the results ! No reason to use large numbers when not needed. (Ideally, the means should be 2, not 1.992, but well…) Jacques Le 23 mai 2013 à 01:23, Dar Scott <d...@swcp.com> a écrit : > Here is (I think) the situation for random(3). > > Lines will be (virtually) assigned numbers randomly; there are 27 > possibilities. > > There are 9 cases in which the first line is assigned a 1. It is first in > the sort. > There are 4 cases in which the first line is assigned a 2 and the other lines > get 2 or 3. It is first in the sort > There is one case in which all get a 3. Again, the first line comes in first. > > So, assuming my math is good, that means the first line comes in first 14 out > of 27 times. That is 52% and should match what people are getting > empirically. > > This doesn't address broken random(), though. It just emphasizes the > importance of the big number for random(). > > Dar > > > On May 22, 2013, at 11:59 AM, Chris Sheffield wrote: > >> I have a list of three words that I need to be randomly sorted. To start >> with, the first word is the correct answer to a question. I want to re-order >> the list so that the correct answer may be the second or third word, and not >> necessarily the first. How can I do this successfully every time? The docs >> give an example like this: >> >> sort lines of myVar by random(the number of lines of myVar) >> >> But this only seems to work successfully one time. After that, the list is >> always set so the first word is the correct answer. So then I tried randomly >> setting the randomSeed value, since this value is supposed to affect the >> random() function and the any keyword, but this didn't seem to make much >> difference except to change it so either the second or third word is >> *always* the right answer. I need it to be more mixed up than that. >> >> So does anyone have a good way to do this? >> >> Thanks, >> Chris >> >> >> -- >> Chris Sheffield >> Read Naturally, Inc. >> www.readnaturally.com > > > _______________________________________________ > use-livecode mailing list > use-livecode@lists.runrev.com > Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription > preferences: > http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode _______________________________________________ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode