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

I'm  not sure what the OS approach would be? Do you mean process  
scheduling algorithms?

About the randomness vs. fairness distinction (don't know which word  
to use here, "dichotomy" surely not, but are they perhaps orthogonal?  
There's surely quite some philosophical discussion of this topic),   
perhaps I should really have thought about this before doing the coding.

In fact what I did "intuitively" was mixing both things up, starting  
by shuffling the input list (so, starting with the "randomness" side),  
but then taking into account the selection from the previous week and  
trying to select people who had not been chosen then (so, deviating in  
a direction of what I thought was "fairness"). Because of this,  
unfortunately, the angry colleague really had a chance of 1/3 of being  
drawn on Monday - but as he did not know why, he attributed it to his  
name being first in the alphabet, this was bad luck for me :-;

So I proposed (at least) the following possible changes (there's no  
reactions yet):
- take out the taking into account of the previous week ("back to  
random")
- add the preferences (less random, but hopefully more fair)
- do the drawings for 2 weeks at once, having as a constraint that as  
few people as possible be drawn twice (given the fact that we have  
less than 10 possible "victims"). Perhaps this is even the best  
combination of randomness & fairness (it would be random but ALSO seem  
quite fair I guess)

Ciao
Sigrid





Am 13.09.2009 um 17:27 schrieb Shriram Krishnamurthi:

> 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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