I'm a history teacher, and I wanted to conduct a 'mock' military draft for my
students to show how the draft process would work.

Effectively, the process requires someone to pick a date and a number
randomly out of two separate barrels. (Say January 5 and 137). That would
mean that everyone with a January 5 birthday would be called up in the 137th
group.

I have an excel sheet set up with the months and days, but I need to figure
how to assign the numbers (1 - 365) to each of those dates 'randomly'.

Thanks for your help.

Install the analysis toolpack if it is not already(Tools-Add-In)
You can use =RANDBETWEEN(1,365) to randomly select a number between 1 and 365

--
-John Northwest11
Please rate when your question is answered to help us and others know what
is helpful.


"Tampa Tom" wrote:

I'm a history teacher, and I wanted to conduct a 'mock' military draft for my
students to show how the draft process would work.

Effectively, the process requires someone to pick a date and a number
randomly out of two separate barrels. (Say January 5 and 137). That would
mean that everyone with a January 5 birthday would be called up in the 137th
group.

I have an excel sheet set up with the months and days, but I need to figure
how to assign the numbers (1 - 365) to each of those dates 'randomly'.

Thanks for your help.

Also be warned that since it is random it could put the same number more than
once. And you will want to copy Paste Special Values because they will
recalculate every time the sheet recalculates.
--
-John Northwest11
Please rate when your question is answered to help us and others know what
is helpful.


"John Bundy" wrote:

Install the analysis toolpack if it is not already(Tools-Add-In)
You can use =RANDBETWEEN(1,365) to randomly select a number between 1 and 365

--
-John Northwest11
Please rate when your question is answered to help us and others know what
is helpful.


"Tampa Tom" wrote:

I'm a history teacher, and I wanted to conduct a 'mock' military draft for my
students to show how the draft process would work.

Effectively, the process requires someone to pick a date and a number
randomly out of two separate barrels. (Say January 5 and 137). That would
mean that everyone with a January 5 birthday would be called up in the 137th
group.

I have an excel sheet set up with the months and days, but I need to figure
how to assign the numbers (1 - 365) to each of those dates 'randomly'.

Thanks for your help.

Suppose your 365 dates are in A1:A365.
The =INDEX(A1:A365,INT(RAND()*366)) will randomly pick a new date whenever
you press F9. If you are going to copy this down a column to get a list of
dates use =INDEX($A1:$A$365,INT(RAND()*366))

I suppose to be real you need to prevent repetitions of selected dates - see
http://www.mcgimpsey.com/excel/udfs/randint.html
Not sure what the Selective Service Boards did about men born on 29 Feb of a
leap year.
Also INT(RAND()*1001 will generate a random number from 1 to 1001
best wishes (and I hope we need to use you worksheet!)
--
Bernard V Liengme
www.stfx.ca/people/bliengme
remove caps from email

"Tampa Tom" <Tampa wrote in message
...
I'm a history teacher, and I wanted to conduct a 'mock' military draft for
my
students to show how the draft process would work.

Effectively, the process requires someone to pick a date and a number
randomly out of two separate barrels. (Say January 5 and 137). That
would
mean that everyone with a January 5 birthday would be called up in the
137th
group.

I have an excel sheet set up with the months and days, but I need to
figure
how to assign the numbers (1 - 365) to each of those dates 'randomly'.

Thanks for your help.

Thanks for that tip! The only problem, of course, is that with the potential
to place the same # by different dates, we might have two #21 draft
birthdates (for example). Is there anyway to let the program know a number
has been used so it won't get picked again?

"John Bundy" wrote:

Also be warned that since it is random it could put the same number more than
once. And you will want to copy Paste Special Values because they will
recalculate every time the sheet recalculates.
--
-John Northwest11
Please rate when your question is answered to help us and others know what
is helpful.


"John Bundy" wrote:

Install the analysis toolpack if it is not already(Tools-Add-In)
You can use =RANDBETWEEN(1,365) to randomly select a number between 1 and 365

--
-John Northwest11
Please rate when your question is answered to help us and others know what
is helpful.


"Tampa Tom" wrote:

I'm a history teacher, and I wanted to conduct a 'mock' military draft for my
students to show how the draft process would work.

Effectively, the process requires someone to pick a date and a number
randomly out of two separate barrels. (Say January 5 and 137). That would
mean that everyone with a January 5 birthday would be called up in the 137th
group.

I have an excel sheet set up with the months and days, but I need to figure
how to assign the numbers (1 - 365) to each of those dates 'randomly'.

Thanks for your help.