Suppose you want to make a random 9 digit number, using every number from 1 to 9 exactly once. You have a process called random(top) that gives a random number up to top (if top was 5, it would give random numbers from 1 to 5)

a) How could you do this?

b) If top couldn't be more than 9, how could you do this using random(top) only 9 times (or less)?

I think the goal of this problem is to find a way to generate a random integer 1 to N when given a random integer generator which returns a value 1 to X.

Posted by Brian Smith on 2003-05-02 08:16:58