[plt-scheme] Re: please help with generating random permutation

From: Shriram Krishnamurthi (sk at cs.brown.edu)
Date: Sun Sep 13 11:27:39 EDT 2009

I think Sigrid is saying that it wouldn't -- I believe that's what
she's calling "uniformity".

On Sun, Sep 13, 2009 at 10:34 AM, Matthias Felleisen
<matthias at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
>
> Would some OS-style approach to office fairness help here?
>
>
> On Sep 13, 2009, at 5:35 AM, keydana at gmx.de wrote:
>
>> Hi Thomas,
>>
>> I'm not so sure about the fairness. I think it's not always easy to define
>> what really IS fair in a given situation.
>> Personally,  I would see fairness less in the line of "uniformity"
>> (everyone gets the same amount of every piece, whether he likes a piece or
>> not) than of  "to each according to his needs" (not being a Marxist
>> otherwise, this sentence I really like).
>>
>> For example in this situation, what I originally proposed was to have
>> everyone who wants state his preferences regarding weekdays (with the amb
>> operator I use, this would be easy to add). Up till now, there was not much
>> resonance for this, but perhaps it's because people tend to assume they have
>> similar preferences or needs - which in my experience need not be true at
>> all. E.g. in this example, I would in fact prefer to be ALWAYS chosen on
>> Mondays :-;
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Sigrid
>>
>>
>>
>> Am 12.09.2009 um 21:37 schrieb Thomas Holubar:
>>
>>> Hi Sigrid!
>>>
>>>> thanks a lot, this helped me very much (both in understanding and in
>>>> giving me the confidence to defend my code)!
>>>
>>> I'm sure you'll have plenty nice - and entertaining - discussions! ;-)
>>>
>>> So FWIW:
>>> Your colleague likely complains that the schedule your program generates
>>> is not *fair*. You in turn claim it to be *random*. And since both of you
>>> are probably right there's little chance you'll eventually come to a
>>> satisfactory conclusion.
>>>
>>> Taking for granted that my understanding of fairness is compatible with
>>> yours (and your colleague's) then fairness and randomness are incompatible.
>>>
>>> YC explained this in more detail already.
>>>
>>> So, if you want happy colleagues make it fair, not random.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Thomas
>>
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