Generating sequence of random numbers with a number of exceptions

Hi, I am working with a data set which has a number of timepoints - these are stored in a variable. I wish to generate a sequence of (8) random timepoints but exclude values which are stored in the variable mentioned above. Any help to do this will be appreciated.

[Karim]

you can use the function ismember to check if one of the random timepoints is stored in the variable, if it would be the case you can then replace that point with a new random point

Answer 1

[Luca Ferro]

could you clarify what do you mean by timepoint?

once you do that i will tweak my suggestion accordingly. For now:

eightRandTimePoints=zeros(1,8); %preallocating for speed

ccount=0; %initialize counter

for jj=1:8

newTimePoint= ... %here a would generate a random time point if it was clearer what a timepoint is

if ~ismember(newTimePoint,avoidList) %if the newly generated timepoint is not part of the avoid list, store it

eightRandTimePoints(jj)=newTimePoint;

ccount=0; %reset security counter

else

jj=jj-1; %if it has to be avoided, we need to run the index back by one t gurantee that we get 8 and not less

if ccount=5 %this is just a counter to avoid infinite loops, if it fails to store 5 consecutives times it exits the cycle

return;

else

ccount=cccount+1;

end

end

end