How to randomly but evenly distribute nodes on a plane

Question

I need to place 1 to 100 nodes (actually 25px dots) on a html5 canvas. I need to make them look randomly distributed so using some kind of grid is out. I also need to ensure

Answer 1

I don't know if this is a named algorithm, but it sounds like you could assign each node a position on a “grid”, then pick a random offset. That would give the appearance of some chaos while still guaranteeing that there are no big empty spaces.

For example:

node.x = node.number / width + (Math.random() - 0.5) * SOME_SCALE;
node.y = node.number % height + (Math.random() - 0.5) * SOME_SCALE;