HangedManBendy
New Member
- Joined
- Nov 9, 2007
- Messages
- 5
I've been lurking a while to see if other posts helped me answer this problem. Apologies if this gets too verbose or unclear. It prob will. Phrasing the problem was my first problem!
I've seen ways to randomize unique numbers, but they usually use 1 set of criteria. What I'd like is something that creates random numbers that are unique across rows AND columns.
For my needs a 5 x 5 table is good. In the example below, any given row or column has a unique set / sequence. I hope so anyway, b/c I made it manually.
2 4 3 1 5
5 3 2 4 1
1 2 4 5 3
3 5 1 2 4
4 1 5 3 2
(good)
Thanks to other posts, I could rand & rank column A, then rand column B so that B1 <> A1, B2 <> A2, and so on. However B1:B5 may end up with duplicate entries, and I'm not sure how to extend it through C - E.
I would like it to be as random as possible. It will have to be recalculated occasionally to prevent memorization. I saw a cool post that created something like this for randomly pairing ppl on horseshoe teams, with an INDEX and MOD, but the MOD created a pattern that will make the next number in the set too predictable for my needs.
I can try to do it manually every time, but I'm afraid I'll create a "MOD" pattern like so:
2. 4 3 1 5
5 2. 4 3 1
1 5 2. 4 3
3 1 5 2. 4
4 3 1 5 2.
(bad)
Any kind of validation warns me I have a duplicate number, which brings me back to "manually randomizing" the sets.
Hope that made sense, and congrats to anyone that read this far down the post! Any solution or direction is appreciated.
I've seen ways to randomize unique numbers, but they usually use 1 set of criteria. What I'd like is something that creates random numbers that are unique across rows AND columns.
For my needs a 5 x 5 table is good. In the example below, any given row or column has a unique set / sequence. I hope so anyway, b/c I made it manually.
2 4 3 1 5
5 3 2 4 1
1 2 4 5 3
3 5 1 2 4
4 1 5 3 2
(good)
Thanks to other posts, I could rand & rank column A, then rand column B so that B1 <> A1, B2 <> A2, and so on. However B1:B5 may end up with duplicate entries, and I'm not sure how to extend it through C - E.
I would like it to be as random as possible. It will have to be recalculated occasionally to prevent memorization. I saw a cool post that created something like this for randomly pairing ppl on horseshoe teams, with an INDEX and MOD, but the MOD created a pattern that will make the next number in the set too predictable for my needs.
I can try to do it manually every time, but I'm afraid I'll create a "MOD" pattern like so:
2. 4 3 1 5
5 2. 4 3 1
1 5 2. 4 3
3 1 5 2. 4
4 3 1 5 2.
(bad)
Any kind of validation warns me I have a duplicate number, which brings me back to "manually randomizing" the sets.
Hope that made sense, and congrats to anyone that read this far down the post! Any solution or direction is appreciated.