Algorithms for generating small random samples

Abstract

We present algorithms for generating small random samples without replacement. We consider two cases. We present an algorithm for sampling a pair of distinct integers, and an algorithm for sampling a triple of distinct integers. The worst‐case runtime of both algorithms is constant, while the worst‐case runtimes of common algorithms for the general case of sampling elements from a set of increase with . Java implementations of both algorithms are included in the open source library .