Thread: Grouping numbers

I am not very good at statistics. So this might be a bit confusing. I will try and explain it.

Lets say I have 100 random numbers. from 1 to 100.
Lets say I want to group these numbers, evenly.
I don't just want to split at 33 and 66. Because the random numbers might only be between 60 to 100. Since they are random.

Is there some statistics formula that can take all the numbers, and group into 3 distributed groups?

Hope that makes sense.

thanks

Originally Posted by magnus101

I am not very good at statistics. So this might be a bit confusing. I will try and explain it.

Lets say I have 100 random numbers. from 1 to 100.
Lets say I want to group these numbers, evenly.
I don't just want to split at 33 and 66. Because the random numbers might only be between 60 to 100. Since they are random.

Is there some statistics formula that can take all the numbers, and group into 3 distributed groups?

Hope that makes sense.

thanks

I mean you can simply come up with a randomized algorithm to sort them. Here is a simple one.

(Begin loop over the dataset)
Generate uniform(0,1) random number;
(If number >1/2 && group 1 is < x)
Put in group 1;
(Otherwise)
Put in group 2;
end