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Randomly select a record

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    Randomly select a record

    Hi:

    Have been looking through the phorum posts, and Dr. Wayne's site to see if I could find code to randomly select a record from a database.

    My situation is this: I need to randomly select a driver from a database that will vary in size. All I need is for the code to ask how many records I want to select, and then have it go out get one randomly and let me know who it is.

    It should be very simple, but I outgrew intelligence long ago. I don't know, maybe I'm just lazy.

    Thanks in advance.

    Greg Williams

    #2
    RE: Randomly select a record

    Check on-line help for the RAND function. But, it could be tricky, so here's what you should do and why it should be this way.

    This should work for you:
    Random_rec = ROUND((RAND() * (Total_Recs-1)) + 1,0)

    Here's why it needs to be so convoluted:

    RAND()returns a random number between 0 and 1, and you want a random record number between 1 and the total recs (assume 'Total_Recs' contains the total records in your table). Assume you have 10 records in the table, from 1 through 10. Total_Recs would therefore = 10, and you want a random number ranging from 1 to 10, so you would try:

    RAND() * Total_Recs

    But this would produce a random number somewhere from 0 through 10, (a range spanning 11 possibilities), so you must subtract 1 from Total_Recs to make the range fit, giving:

    RAND() * (Total_Recs-1)

    But since this will return a range from 0 to 9, and you want 1 through 10, add 1 to the output:

    RAND() * (Total_Recs - 1) + 1

    Now, since you need a whole number that has a fair chance of randomly picking either the first or the last record, you should round the number to 0 places, giving:

    ROUND((RAND() * (Total_Recs-1)) + 1,0)

    Hope this works for you!

    Eric

    Comment


      #3
      RE: Randomly select a record

      Greg

      Looking at Eric's excellent response, if you have "outgrown intelligence" so have a lot of us! :-)

      Regards

      Glen
      Glen Schild



      My Blog

      Comment


        #4
        RE: Randomly select a record

        Greg

        Search the forum for "random numbers" I think you will find a number of interesting responses, particularly about having the "seed" the random number list to get unique random sequences.

        Jerry

        Comment


          #5
          RE: Randomly select a record

          I need to randomly select a driver from a database that will vary in size.
          -------------------------------------------------

          I'm glad you got your answer because I was thinking of a block of code that would let you select between a driver of 5'2", 110 lbs and a driver of 6'4", 420 lbs.

          Comment

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