help - stop random number from repeating

[whoareyou]

YAY! I was right (H)

[Tony]

Except that you don't get an even distribution with this method. That is, some outcomes of this type of a shuffle are more likely than others (ideally they should all be the same). See http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/12/the-danger-of-naivete.html for a detailed explanation of what is going on.

[RandomLetters]

whoareyou @ Mon Jun 13, 2011 7:24 pm wrote:

This is the code I'm using from this examplesdepot website:

code:

// Create a list List list = new ArrayList(); // Add elements to list // Shuffle the elements in the list Collections.shuffle(list); // Create an array String[] array = new String[]{"a", "b", "c"}; // Shuffle the elements in the array Collections.shuffle(Arrays.asList(array));

So in order to use ArrayList, I importt java.util.*, then it says, "Type List is imported on demand from java/awt and java/util.".
Then I changed the import to java.util.ArrayList, then it says "you cannot assign a "java.util.ArrayList" expression to a "java.awt.List" variable."

That's because the awt package has its own List class. Try importing the specific classes that you need from each package. Or http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/package/usepkgs.html near the bottom if you actually need to use both.