Get a dynamic number of (different) "Random" numbers per record

Claje

Hi,

This is kind of a weird problem that I haven't had to think about before.

I have a use case where an individual record has a number associated to it, called Y from here on, and we want to pick N random numbers between 1 and Y, where N is defined as CEIL(Y*.3).

However, we don't want to pick the same number twice.

Is there a way to do this kind of sampling, where we pull a number out of the pool?  I think an iterative macro might work but it feels like that might also be overkill.

Thanks!

danrh

Here's kind of a hack solution

I'm using the Generate Rows to create Y*10 records to give myself a REALLY good chance that when I use RANDINT I get at least Y*.3 number of unique values (I googled how to say the ratio and it's something like 1 in a "quinquavigintillion".  Changing the number from 10, up or down, creates a tradeoff between the speed your workflow will run at and the chance of failure).  Then I use a Unique to make sure there are no duplicates and a Filter to grab the first CEIL(Y*.3) records.  Because Alteryx tries to be helpful and sometimes pre-sorts your data, the RecordID and Sort tools ironically maintain the randomness.

Hope it helps!

solution.yxmd