It's easy if you don't need exact results!\
I didn't mean randomizing the votes. Perhaps I should have written "shuffling." I meant randomizing the order of the stream.
I didn't mean randomizing the votes. Perhaps I should have written "shuffling." I meant randomizing the order of the stream.
1. The items come in a stream, so you have to accept each one in order.
2. You have to output a stream too.
3. You get a fixed amount of storage, much smaller than the stream.
4. The items are arbitrary and unique, so there is no way to compact n items into significantly less then O(n) storage.
If the stream is large and sorted, you run out of buffer before the input stream gets past 'A'. You're forced to output thousands/millions of entries in a row that start with A. That doesn't look at all random.
It seems impossible if I understand the problem. Is one of my numbered statements wrong? Is there a way to get items out of order? Put items back into the stream? Is there a limited range of items? Getting unique items in order lets me compress the data very slightly, but 25% more storage doesn't fix anything either.
7 (+/- 2) is the magic number. However, you make a good point. This is highly dependent on exactly how large the data is, and how "casual" the human are.
Even with a small size like 200 a shuffler that weak won't do a good job of turning sorted into unsorted, even at a glance.
That depends on how casual the inspection is.