order by rand() problem

[KashKurcura]

Hello:

I'm having problems with ORDER BY RAND() in my MYSQL select statement. The problem is that the first row is not random but the rows there after are random. Does anyone know why this would be?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

KashKurcura

[planetsim]

What are you saying?

Do you mean like the first row never shows up but the rest do.

If this is what you mean. As its random of course it may never show rows like the way you say it should.

For example on a coin being tossed.

In theory getting heads is 50% chance.
But in a practical it maybe only 30% but of course it would be much closer than that.

So in a simple explanation. RAND() wont work the way you want it. It works more like the coin being tossed

[KashKurcura]

I have a select statement like such.

$SQLQuery = "SELECT BannerID, BannerURL, BannerTarget, Displays, Clicks
FROM Banners
ORDER BY RAND()
LIMIT 1";

In this query the result that gets shown NEVER changes but it always stays the same. There are over 40 rows to select from so for surly there must be something wrong. If I move the limit up to 10, the first row still never changes but the other 9 rows are always random.

KashKurcura

[JasonL]

Try this query:

$SQLQuery = "SELECT *, rand() as r 
FROM Banners 
ORDER BY r
LIMIT 1";