Assign elements into groups with the possibility of an element being in multiple groups

Question

0.00/5 (No votes)

See more:

I have a problem and I'm not to sure about how to go about handling it.

I have a group a students in a school management database that I need to randomly assign to pre-defined groups. I've done a lot of research on group assignment but I can't quite find what I'm looking for.

Basically, a student can be a member of a multiple groups. For example Tom can be a member of the Tennis_club as well as the CS_dept and the LARP_club, while Alex may only be a member of the CS_dept.

What I have tried:

My first idea was to generate a random number between 1 and 4 for example, representing the number of groups a student is to be a member of. Let's say the number 2 is returned. I then generate another random number between 1 and 20 (the number of groups I've defined) 2 times, and assign the student to the 2 groups of the numbers returned between 1 and 20. This will be done for each student in the database.

This is my idea but I'm not sure if it's the best way to go about it considering the number of students currently in the database. Any ideas?

Posted 30-Dec-17 8:22am

Rain Alex

Add a Solution

Comments

Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter 1-Jan-18 3:56am

If I understand correctly, you already have a table with students and an other with groups and you have to create - randomly - some connection between the two...
As the connection to be made (and the number of connections too) should be random, I can't see a better approach than loop with randoms in the way you described it...

Add your solution here

Treat my content as plain text, not as HTML

Preview 0

…

Existing Members

Sign in to your account

...or Join us

Download, Vote, Comment, Publish.

Your Email
Password
Forgot your password?

Your Email
This email is in use. Do you need your password?
Optional Password

I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
Please subscribe me to the CodeProject newsletters

When answering a question please:

Read the question carefully.
Understand that English isn't everyone's first language so be lenient of bad spelling and grammar.
If a question is poorly phrased then either ask for clarification, ignore it, or edit the question and fix the problem. Insults are not welcome.
Don't tell someone to read the manual. Chances are they have and don't get it. Provide an answer or move on to the next question.

Let's work to help developers, not make them feel stupid.

This content, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)