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Re: For Loop and Array related

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg58058] Re: For Loop and Array related
  • From: danl at wolfram.com
  • Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2005 05:19:17 -0400 (EDT)
  • References: <d8oucl$t6q$1@smc.vnet.net>
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

mchangun at gmail.com wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I have an array with 100 elements, all set to zero initially.  Then I
> want to randomly choose one element and increase its value by one, and
> repeat this 16000 times. Here is my code:
>
> Lattice = Table[0, {n, 100}];
> For[i = 1, i = 16000, i++, Lattice[[Random[Integer, {1, 100}]]]++]
>
> So now if I add all the elements in the list Lattice together, I should
> get 16000 (I use Total[Lattice] to get the sum of the list).  But this
> doesn't happen, and strangely, each time I run this, the sum of the
> list is different!  What am I doing wrong?
>
> Also I'm aware that a lot of Mathematica newbies try and write code
> like it were C++ and I think i've fallen into this trap as well.  So is
> there a different (more Mathematica) way which I can implement the
> above?
>
> Thanks in advanced.

As several respondants noted, the key step of what you are doing is
equivalent to

lattice[[Random[Integer,{1,100}]]] =
   lattice[[Random[Integer,{1,100}]]]+1

This selects different random positions in each invocation, causing the
trouble noted. I wanted to mention that this has come up in this forum
in past:

http://forums.wolfram.com/mathgroup/archive/2001/Dec/msg00294.html

Here is a method that is quite fast. If you have len lists and they are
to sum to total, instead of walking and incrementing total times, just
pick len-1 random values from 0 to total, sort them, augment with 0 and
total at the ends, and take successive differences. The code below will
do this.

randomLattice1[len_,total_] := ListConvolve[{1,-1},
  Join[{0},Sort[Table[Random[Integer,{0,total}], {len-1}]],{total}]]

In[74]:= Timing[rl = randomLattice[10^5,10^7];]
Out[74]= {0.219967 Second, Null}

In[75]:= Total[rl1]
Out[75]= 10000000

In[76]:= Take[rl,44]
Out[76]= {91, 9, 65, 17, 214, 3, 54, 178, 24, 80, 36, 174, 162, 89,
350, 52,
    86, 90, 14, 64, 8, 226, 109, 64, 59, 58, 138, 47, 61, 128, 15, 57,
339,
    61, 45, 61, 93, 19, 240, 15, 27, 41, 19, 147}


Daniel Lichtblau
Wolfram Research


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