Generate A List Of Numbers Where Numbers Cannot Be Misread As Other Numbers In The List

[Bidder List]

I am trying to prevent misreading/reversing bidder registration numbers in a list of numbers... How do I generate a list of numbers, perhaps 1 to 10,000, where numbers, if misread, will not result in another number in the list... As an example, 12 would be allowed in the list, but 21 would not be allowed, because if we read the "21" reversed that would be 12 - and that could be a different bidder... In other words, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22 would be the first 21 numbers in the list? I seem to remember that there was a name for such a list, but in my post-coma haze, I have forgotten what that list is called...

 

[Dr.Peterson]

This depends on what kinds of misreadings you consider possible. I can easily imagine misreading 1 as 7 (based on handwriting), or confusing 3 and 8 when badly printed, for example. And how about misreading 1111 as 111 or 1121 as 1211?

 

[Steven G]

This is the study of error coding.

There are codes (numbers in your case) where even if one digit is off (not reversed) from the set of known numbers you can still guess which number this incorrect number should be using what is called the Hamming distance.

For your situation I would just use 111777444 for 174 for example. In this way you will be able to make a good guess as to what the number should be if it was off my 1 digit. For example, the number 232444888 would most likely should have been written as 222444888.