Create 20 unique bingo cards - sql

Question

I'm trying to create 20 unique cards with numbers, but I struggle a bit.. So basically I need to create 20 unique matrices 3x3 having numbers 1-10 in first column, numbers 11-20 in the second column and 21-30 in the third column.. Any ideas? I'd prefer to have it done in r, especially as I don't know Visual Basic. In excel I know how to generate the cards, but not sure how to ensure they are unique..
It seems to be quite precise and straightforward to me. Anyway, i needed to create 20 matrices that would look like :
[,1] [,2] [,3]
[1,] 5 17 23
[2,] 8 18 22
[3,] 3 16 24
Each of the matrices should be unique and each of the columns should consist of three unique numbers ( the 1st column - numbers 1-10, the 2nd column 11-20, the 3rd column - 21-30).
Generating random numbers is easy, though how to make sure that generated cards are unique?Please have a look at the post that i voted for as an answer - as it gives you thorough explanation how to achieve it.

Answer 1

(N.B. : I misread "rows" instead of "columns", so the following code and explanation will deal with matrices with random numbers 1-10 on 1st row, 11-20 on 2nd row etc., instead of columns, but it's exactly the same just transposed)
This code should guarantee uniqueness and good randomness :
library(gtools)
# helper function
getKthPermWithRep <- function(k,n,r){
k <- k - 1
if(n^r< k){
stop('k is greater than possibile permutations')
}
v <- rep.int(0,r)
index <- length(v)
while ( k != 0 )
{
remainder<- k %% n
k <- k %/% n
v[index] <- remainder
index <- index - 1
}
return(v+1)
}
# get all possible permutations of 10 elements taken 3 at a time
# (singlerowperms = 720)
allperms <- permutations(10,3)
singlerowperms <- nrow(allperms)
# get 20 random and unique bingo cards
cards <- lapply(sample.int(singlerowperms^3,20),FUN=function(k){
perm2use <- getKthPermWithRep(k,singlerowperms,3)
m <- allperms[perm2use,]
m[2,] <- m[2,] + 10
m[3,] <- m[3,] + 20
return(m)
# if you want transpose the result just do:
# return(t(m))
})
Explanation
(disclaimer tl;dr)
To guarantee both randomness and uniqueness, one safe approach is generating all the possibile bingo cards and then choose randomly among them without replacements.
To generate all the possible cards, we should :
generate all the possibilities for each row of 3 elements
get the cartesian product of them
Step (1) can be easily obtained using function permutations of package gtools (see the object allPerms in the code). Note that we just need the permutations for the first row (i.e. 3 elements taken from 1-10) since the permutations of the other rows can be easily obtained from the first by adding 10 and 20 respectively.
Step (2) is also easy to get in R, but let's first consider how many possibilities will be generated. Step (1) returned 720 cases for each row, so, in the end we will have 720*720*720 = 720^3 = 373248000 possible bingo cards!
Generate all of them is not practical since the occupied memory would be huge, thus we need to find a way to get 20 random elements in this big range of possibilities without actually keeping them in memory.
The solution comes from the function getKthPermWithRep, which, given an index k, it returns the k-th permutation with repetition of r elements taken from 1:n (note that in this case permutation with repetition corresponds to the cartesian product).
e.g.
# all permutations with repetition of 2 elements in 1:3 are
permutations(n = 3, r = 2,repeats.allowed = TRUE)
# [,1] [,2]
# [1,] 1 1
# [2,] 1 2
# [3,] 1 3
# [4,] 2 1
# [5,] 2 2
# [6,] 2 3
# [7,] 3 1
# [8,] 3 2
# [9,] 3 3
# using the getKthPermWithRep you can get directly the k-th permutation you want :
getKthPermWithRep(k=4,n=3,r=2)
# [1] 2 1
getKthPermWithRep(k=8,n=3,r=2)
# [1] 3 2
Hence now we just choose 20 random indexes in the range 1:720^3 (using sample.int function), then for each of them we get the corresponding permutation of 3 numbers taken from 1:720 using function getKthPermWithRep.
Finally these triplets of numbers, can be converted to actual card rows by using them as indexes to subset allPerms and get our final matrix (after, of course, adding +10 and +20 to the 2nd and 3rd row).
Bonus
Explanation of getKthPermWithRep
If you look at the example above (permutations with repetition of 2 elements in 1:3), and subtract 1 to all number of the results you get this :
> permutations(n = 3, r = 2,repeats.allowed = T) - 1
[,1] [,2]
[1,] 0 0
[2,] 0 1
[3,] 0 2
[4,] 1 0
[5,] 1 1
[6,] 1 2
[7,] 2 0
[8,] 2 1
[9,] 2 2
If you consider each number of each row as a number digit, you can notice that those rows (00, 01, 02...) are all the numbers from 0 to 8, represented in base 3 (yes, 3 as n). So, when you ask the k-th permutation with repetition of r elements in 1:n, you are also asking to translate k-1 into base n and return the digits increased by 1.
Therefore, given the algorithm to change any number from base 10 to base n :
changeBase <- function(num,base){
v <- NULL
while ( num != 0 )
{
remainder = num %% base # assume K > 1
num = num %/% base # integer division
v <- c(remainder,v)
}
if(is.null(v)){
return(0)
}
return(v)
}
you can easily obtain getKthPermWithRep function.

Answer 2

One 3x3 matrix with the desired value range can be generated with the following code:
mat <- matrix(c(sample(1:10,3), sample(11:20,3), sample(21:30, 3)), nrow=3)
Furthermore, you can use a for loop to generate a list of 20 unique matrices as follows:
for (i in 1:20) {
mat[[i]] <- list(matrix(c(sample(1:10,3), sample(11:20,3), sample(21:30,3)), nrow=3))
print(mat[[i]])
}

Answer 3

Well OK I may fall on my face here but I propose a checksum (using Excel).
This is a unique signature for each bingo card which will remain invariate if the order of numbers within any column is changed without changing the actual numbers. The formula is
=SUM(10^MOD(A2:A4,10)+2*10^MOD(B2:B4,10)+4*10^MOD(C2:C4,10))
where the bingo numbers for the first card are in A2:C4.
The idea is to generate a 10-digit number for each column, then multiply each by a constant and add them to get the signature.
So here I have generated two random bingo cards using a standard formula from here plus two which are deliberately made to be just permutations of each other.
Then I check if any of the signatures are duplicates using the formula
=MAX(COUNTIF(D5:D20,D5:D20))
which shouldn't given an answer more than 1.
In the unlikely event that there were duplicates, then you would just press F9 and generate some new cards.
All formulae are array formulae and must be entered with CtrlShiftEnter

Answer 4

Here is an inelegant way to do this. Generate all possible combinations and then sample without replacement. These are permutations, combinations: order does matter in bingo
library(dplyr)
library(tidyr)
library(magrittr)
generate_samples = function(n) {
first = data_frame(first = (n-9):n)
first %>%
merge(first %>% rename(second = first)) %>%
merge(first %>% rename(third = first)) %>%
sample_n(20)
}
suffix = function(df, suffix)
df %>%
setNames(names(.) %>%
paste0(suffix))
generate_samples(10) %>% suffix(10) %>%
bind_cols(generate_samples(20) %>% suffix(20)) %>%
bind_cols(generate_samples(30) %>% suffix(30)) %>%
rowwise %>%
do(matrix = t(.) %>% matrix(3)) %>%
use_series(matrix)