I asked Python to create random cities, states, and countries – and it did, separately. Now I’ve got Nairobi in Canada and Houston chilling somewhere in France. Thanks a lot for the chaos!
The problem?
Turns out, I broke the #1 rule of data simulation: be specific about relationships.
Telling your code to “pick a city, pick a state, then pick a country” sounds logical. At least until Python interprets that as:
“Sure! Let’s pull each from separate hats and mash them together however we feel.”
Voilà: a geographic fever dream.
Why? Because randomizing each column separately ignores the fact that cities belong to specific states and countries – they don’t teleport.
The Fix
I created a structured list of valid (City, State, Country) combos and only randomized at the row level.
Now Nairobi’s back in Kenya, Houston’s back in Texas, and the planet makes sense again.
Lesson
Randomness is easy. Controlled randomness? That takes planning.