# A fast and unbiased procedure to randomize ecological binary matrices with fixed row and column totals

*Source* · `src-strona-2014-curveball` · status: **n/a**

| field | value |
|---|---|
| kind | Peer-reviewed paper |
| authors | Giovanni Strona, Domenico Nappo, Francesco Boccacci, Simone Fattorini, Jesus San-Miguel-Ayanz |
| venue | Nature Communications 5, 4114 |
| date | 2014-06-11 |
| url | https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms5114 |
| doi | 10.1038/ncomms5114 |
| accessed | 2026-11-02 |

## Notes

Introduces the Curveball algorithm for randomizing presence-absence matrices without altering row and column totals, and reports that it samples the set of matrix configurations uniformly at far lower computational effort than earlier swap methods. The fixed-margin null of §5.3 uses its trade: two rows exchange a random part of the entries only one of them holds.

## Citation

Giovanni Strona, Domenico Nappo, Francesco Boccacci, Simone Fattorini, Jesus San-Miguel-Ayanz (2014-06-11). *A fast and unbiased procedure to randomize ecological binary matrices with fixed row and column totals*. Nature Communications 5, 4114 https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms5114

---
Provenance: created in run `2026-11-02-es-v5-revision`.