[issue18928] Remove misleading documentation for random.shuffle

Changes by Tim Peters : -- resolution: -> invalid stage: -> committed/rejected ___ Python tracker ___ ___ Python-bugs-list mailing l

[issue18928] Remove misleading documentation for random.shuffle

David Benbennick added the comment: Okay, I see what the comment is saying now. I was mistaken. It might make the statement clearer if it is made more precise. "rather small" is vague. That vagueness is intentional, but it makes it more confusing. -- status: open -> closed

[issue18928] Remove misleading documentation for random.shuffle

Tim Peters added the comment: When the comment was introduced, Python's Wichmann-Hill generator had a much shorter period, and we couldn't even generate all the permutations of a deck of cards. The period is astronomically larger now, but the stackoverflow answer (2080) is correct for the cur

[issue18928] Remove misleading documentation for random.shuffle

R. David Murray added the comment: Alternatively, you would have to supply (or supply a pointer to) a mathematical proof of your thesis. -- ___ Python tracker ___ __

[issue18928] Remove misleading documentation for random.shuffle

R. David Murray added the comment: It seems to me that 2080 (per the accepted answer to your [3]) is indeed "a rather small len(x)", and that the docs are correct as written. I wonder if it would be worth adding a footnote that explains how to calculate that example 2080 number from the docume

[issue18928] Remove misleading documentation for random.shuffle

New submission from David Benbennick: Since Python 2.1 [1], when random.shuffle was added, the documentation has said: """Note that for even rather small len(x), the total number of permutations of x is larger than the period of most random number generators; this implies that most permutation