Randomizing order

Problem

You want to randomize the order of a data structure.

Solution

# Create a vector
v <- 11:20
# 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

# Randomize the order of the vector
v <- sample(v)
#  20 11 13 12 15 14 18 17 16 19

# Create a data frame
data <- data.frame(label=letters[1:5], number=11:15)
# label number
#     a     11
#     b     12
#     c     13
#     d     14
#     e     15

# Randomize the order of the data frame
data <- data[sample(1:nrow(data)), ]
# label number
#     e     15
#     c     13
#     d     14
#     a     11
#     b     12

Notes

To make a randomization repeatable, you should set the seed for the random number generator. See ../../Numbers/Generating random numbers and ../../Numbers/Generating repeatable sequences of random numbers for more information.