This script is an example of how to pick groups of 'r' people randomly from within a larger sample of N people such that no single person appears in two groups.

grouping_people.py

"""
This script is an example of how to pick groups of 'r' people randomly from within a larger sample of N people such that no single person appears in two groups.
I find this script useful when I have to divide my employees into groups randomly
"""
import argparse
import itertools
import random

#Note: Listing employees just to keep the example short
#You would (ideally) get a list of employees from some central datastore
#UPDATE EMPLOYEES TO SUIT YOUR CONTEXT
EMPLOYEES = ['Wilhelm', 'Emmanuel', 'Jose', 'Alexander', 'Max', 'Mikhail', 'Vassily', 'Tal', 'Tigran', 'Boris', 'Bobby', 'Anatoly', 'Gary', 'Vladimir', 'Anand', 'Magnus']

def check_no_overlap(my_tuple, reference_list):
    """
    Verify if at least one member of a tuple overlpas with the members in a list of tuples
    :return result_flag: boolean
    """
    result_flag = True 
    for reference_tuple in reference_list:
        result_flag &= set(my_tuple).isdisjoint(set(reference_tuple))
        if result_flag is False:
            break
    
    return result_flag

def get_groups(group_size):
    """
    Return groups of size group_size
    :return groups: list of tuples
    """
    unique_groups = []
    expected_num_groups = int(len(EMPLOYEES)/group_size)
    #We shuffle the combinations to keep the order fresh everytime
    random.shuffle(EMPLOYEES)
    if group_size >= len(EMPLOYEES):
        unique_groups.append(tuple(EMPLOYEES))
    else:
        #all_combos is a list of all group_size combinations
        all_combos = list(itertools.combinations(EMPLOYEES, group_size))

        #Our next step is to make the groups disjoint
        #'disjoint' = One employee cannot appear in two groups
        for combo in all_combos:
            if check_no_overlap(combo, unique_groups):
                unique_groups.append(combo)
            #A small optimization is to stop checking combos once we reach the expected number of groups
            if len(unique_groups) == expected_num_groups:
                break

    return unique_groups
                
#----START OF SCRIPT
if __name__ == '__main__':
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
    parser.add_argument('--size', dest = 'size', type = int, default = 2, help = 'Size of the group you want')
    args = parser.parse_args()
    if args.size < 1:
        parser.error(f'Invalid argument --size {args.size}. Group size should be an positive integer.')
    groups = get_groups(args.size)
    if len(groups):
        print('Groups chosen are:')
        for i, group in enumerate(groups):
            print(f'{i}. {group}')