How to pseudo-randomize the ordering of a vector?

Say that I have a vector

A=randperm(10)

and I want to randomize the ordering of this vector. Normally I would do something like

A=Shuffle(A)

but in this case I want a pseudoradomized ordering: that is, the later the value is in A (ordering wise, not the actual content of the value), the more I want it to appear near the beginning of A. For instance, I want there to be a greater chance of values A(7:10) to appear near the front of A and the values A(1:4) to appear near the end of A. Hopefully that makes sense.

Is this possible to do?

Answer 1

[Jeff Miller]

One approach is to think of your data, A, as being column one of a 2-column array (e.g., 10x2). Now generate pseudo-random numbers into column 2 using some scheme that tends to give smaller values to higher numbered rows, e.g.,

for iRow=1:NRows
    A(iRow,2) = normrnd(-iRow,1);
end

Then, sort the rows of A by the random numbers, carrying along the data values in column 1 (see, for example, https://stackoverflow.com/questions/134712/how-can-i-sort-a-2-d-array-in-matlab-with-respect-to-one-column).

Obviously you have a lot of choices for how to assign the numbers, depending on exactly how biased you want your pseudo-random ordering to be.