How to generate random indicies?

I would like to generate k different random indices from 1 to N. One solution is randperm(N,k), however I do not need to shuffle the indicies. Are there any other solution directly generating idicies in order?

Answers (2)

Image Analyst
Image Analyst on 31 Jan 2015
Edited: Image Analyst on 31 Jan 2015
Yes, but if they're not "shuffled" then they're not random, are they? So you can get indices in ascending numerical order from 1 to N this way:
indices = 1 : N;
If you want what you said, but just sorted , then sort them:
pseudoRandomIndices = sort(randperm(N, k), 'ascend');

4 Comments

k is less than N, so for example randperm(10,3) gives back 9,2,5 but I want them in order: 2,5,9
You have to use the entire ‘pseudoRandomIndices’ assignment. It returns them in ascending order:
N = 10;
k = 3;
pseudoRandomIndices = sort(randperm(N, k), 'ascend')
returns:
pseudoRandomIndices =
2 6 8
I can sort! This is not the question!
The algorithm is unnecessarily complicated (computational cost is unnecessarily big for large N)
We're not sure which algorithm you're thinking of, sort or randperms, but feel free to rewrite either one with a less complicated version of them. We're not going to do that for you. Good luck.

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Matt J
Matt J on 1 Feb 2015
Edited: Matt J on 1 Feb 2015
This avoids sorting,
idx=false(1,N);
vals=1:N;
idx(randperm(N, k))=1;
result=vals(idx);

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on 31 Jan 2015

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on 1 Feb 2015

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