From: ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk   
      
   Malcolm McLean  writes:   
      
   > You have a list of candidates, ranked by score. You want to try them   
   > out in order, with the better candidates being tried first. However   
   > you don't want the process to be deterministic - each run should yield   
   > a separate order. And you want even low-ranked candidates to have some   
   > chance of being tried early.   
   >   
   > Is there a partial sort / partial shuffle which can achieve this?   
      
   Let me check is I know what you mean.  You have a list of words with   
   scores   
      
     12 apple   
     10 cat   
      9 dog   
      8 egg   
      5 fox   
      
   and you want a quasi-sort that might just (but very very rarely)   
   produce   
      
      5 fox   
      8 egg   
      9 dog   
     10 cat   
     12 apple   
      
   but will produce these orderings much more frequently:   
      
     12 apple    10 cat       10 cat   
      9 dog       9 dog       12 apple   
     10 cat      12 apple      8 egg   
      8 egg       8 egg        5 fox   
      5 fox       5 fox        9 dog   
      
   ?  First thought.  Have a random field, r, that is chosen from a normal   
   distribution prior to each sort.  Then sort by score+r.  By adjusting   
   the distribution's parameters, you will get different probabilities of   
   re-arrangement from almost none (with, say, mean=0, sdev=0.1) to chaotic   
   when mean=1000 sdev=10000.   
      
   --   
   Ben.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)