We’re playing Secret Santa in my family: you are giving a present to only one other person, and their identity is only known to you. You need to give them a handmade present or a present bought in a second-hand store. Well that last part is our own variation of the concept.<\/p>\n
You might be playing Secret Santa in your lab.<\/p>\n
Here is a little R function to sort the draw without anyone seeing the outcome, and without the need to involve an external participant. The only inputs are:<\/p>\n
-a vector of names of participants; for example c(“Patrick”,”Nicole”,”Maria”,”Pablo”)<\/p>\n
-the folder where you want the output files; for example “C:\/Users\/Maria\/SecretSanta”<\/p>\n
After you’ve run the function, send to each person the output file named after them.<\/p>\n
The function:<\/p>\n
secretsanta=function(names,directory){\r\nchosen=names\r\nfor (i in 1:length(names)){\r\n if (names[i]%in% chosen){\r\n choice=sample(chosen[-which(chosen==names[i])],1)\r\n }else{\r\n choice=sample(chosen,1)\r\n }\r\n chosen=chosen[-which(chosen==choice)]\r\n write.table(paste(directory,\"\/\",names[i],\", you will give a present to \",choice,sep=\"\"),\r\n file=paste(names[i],\".txt\",sep=\"\"),quote=F,row.names=F,col.names=F)\r\n }\r\n return(\"Done! the files are in the provided directory. Merry Christmas.\")\r\n}<\/pre>\n <\/p>\n
Load the function into R by entering the code above, and then run the function with your input:<\/p>\n
secretsanta(names=c(\"Patrick\",\"Nicole\",\"Maria\",\"Pablo\"), directory=\"C:\/Users\/Maria\/SecretSanta\")<\/pre>\n <\/p>\n
Merry Christmas!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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