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April 10, 2005

Random Request

Do any of our very smart readers know of the best way to generate 100 "lists" of random arrangements of binary data? Each list would need 450 "0"s and 50 "1"s. When I get these lists, I will select every 10th record to sample 50 records of each list and plot the distribution.

Yes, I know I need to get a life.

UPDATE: Friend of SCO, Lotharbot, answered my call and whipped out the data with shocking speed. Thanks, Lotharbot. Yet another reason why I love blogging :-)

Posted by Rick at April 10, 2005 08:03 PM

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If you need 50 1's per list of 500, an easy way to generate it would be to use a uniform distribution from 1 to 500 to select the location of one of the 1's. Continue until you've selected 50 unique locations. That will generate one of the lists.

If you'd like, I'll generate the lists for you in MATLAB. It'll take about 3 minutes to write the script.

Posted by: LotharBot at April 10, 2005 10:00 PM

Wow, Tom, that would be great! Although, I don't quite understand how you plan to do it. Would you be able to send a spreadsheet with 100 columns, each with 50 randomly distributed (or as close to randomly as possible) 1's and 500 rows?

It's for some exit poll analysis and I'll be sure to cite you for your contribution.

Thanks!

Posted by: Rick Brady at April 10, 2005 10:13 PM

It'd be nice to have more info on exactly what you want done and how you plan to use the data... you can find me on AOL instant messenger with the name Lothar13, or post here, or e-mail me if you want alternate contact info.

I'm creating the first attempt at a script to generate the data now.

Posted by: LotharBot at April 10, 2005 10:51 PM

Awesome... I'm now a "friend of SCO". Movin' on up in the world ;)

Posted by: LotharBot at April 11, 2005 03:54 AM

Tom, you've always been a friend of SCO (even the old SCO). Now it's "official." heh.

Posted by: Rick Brady at April 11, 2005 10:14 AM