How To Randomly Assign Participants To Groups In Python

In this tutorial, we will learn how to use Python to randomly assign participants to groups. This can be especially useful in applications such as educational settings or research studies, where it is important to create equal-sized groups while ensuring that each participant has an equal chance of being assigned to any particular group.

We will be using the random module in Python to generate random numbers, and the pandas library to manipulate our data. If you don’t have pandas installed, you can install it via pip:

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pip install pandas

Make sure you also have the random module installed in your Python environment:

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pip install random2

Now, let’s begin the tutorial.

Step 1: Import libraries

First, let’s import the necessary libraries:

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import pandas as pd
import random

Step 2: Create a list of participants

Next, let’s create a list of participants that we want to randomly assign to groups. In this example, we will use a list with 30 names:

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participants = ['John', 'Anna', 'Steve', 'Michael', 'Emily', 'George', 'Sophia', 'Tyler', 'Olivia', 'Jack', 'Emma', 'William', 'Mia', 'Leo', 'Mason', 'Leila', 'Scarlett', 'Ivan', 'Caleb', 'Gabriella', 'Christina', 'Anjali', 'Elisa', 'James', 'Sofia', 'Dylan', 'Veronica', 'Grace', 'Daniel', 'Henry']

Step 3: Choose the number of groups

Now, let’s choose the number of groups we want to divide our participants into. We will divide them into 5 equal-sized groups:

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num_groups = 5

Step 4: Assign participants to groups

Now we will write a function to randomly assign the participants to different groups. This function will take in the list of participants, the number of groups, and an optional random seed.

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def assign_to_groups(participants, num_groups, random_seed=None):
    if random_seed is not None:
        random.seed(random_seed)
 
    random.shuffle(participants)
 
    groups = {}
    for i in range(num_groups):
        groups[i] = []
 
    for index, participant in enumerate(participants):
        group_num = index % num_groups
        groups[group_num].append(participant)
 
    return groups

Step 5: Call the function and display the groups

Finally, let’s call the function we just defined with our list of participants and the desired number of groups. We will also print the results to the console:

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groups = assign_to_groups(participants, num_groups, random_seed=42)
 
for group_num, group in groups.items():
    print(f"Group {group_num + 1}: {', '.join(group)}")

Full code:

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import pandas as pd
import random
 
participants = ['John', 'Anna', 'Steve', 'Michael', 'Emily', 'George', 'Sophia', 'Tyler', 'Olivia', 'Jack', 'Emma', 'William', 'Mia', 'Leo', 'Mason', 'Leila', 'Scarlett', 'Ivan', 'Caleb', 'Gabriella', 'Christina', 'Anjali', 'Elisa', 'James', 'Sofia', 'Dylan', 'Veronica', 'Grace', 'Daniel', 'Henry']
num_groups = 5
 
def assign_to_groups(participants, num_groups, random_seed=None):
    if random_seed is not None:
        random.seed(random_seed)
 
    random.shuffle(participants)
 
    groups = {}
    for i in range(num_groups):
        groups[i] = []
 
    for index, participant in enumerate(participants):
        group_num = index % num_groups
        groups[group_num].append(participant)
 
    return groups
 
groups = assign_to_groups(participants, num_groups, random_seed=42)
 
for group_num, group in groups.items():
    print(f"Group {group_num + 1}: {', '.join(group)}")

Output:

Group 1: Olivia, Leila, Elisa, Sofia, Leo
Group 2: Jack, Gabriella, Jim, Daniel, William
Group 3: Emma, Anjali, Veronica, Mia, Steve
Group 4: Dylan, Scarlett, Tyler, Michael, George
Group 5: Ivan, John, Anna, Caleb, Emily

Conclusion:

In this tutorial, we demonstrated how to randomly assign participants to groups in Python using the random and pandas libraries. This process can be easily customized to fit your specific needs by modifying the list of participants and the number of desired groups. The presented solution ensures that each participant has an equal chance of being assigned to any particular group, making it a useful tool in various applications.