Generate combinations of values which sum to one, sorted in descending order

Question

Do you know a more efficient way to generate a matrix holding all unique combinations of \"weights\" (let weights be w and 0 <= w <= 1, and values of w are separated b

Answer 1

General purpose function with standard packages:

# Generate weights matrix with noWeights columns and noRows rows.
# Each row of this matrix contains sorted decremental weights summing up to 1.0.
generateWeights = function(noWeights,
                           noRows,
                           distribution = runif,
                           rounding = function(x){ round(x, 1) })
{
  generator = function()
  {
    x = distribution (noWeights);
    x = x/sum(x);
    sort(rounding(x), decreasing = T)
  } 
  t(replicate(noRows, generator()))
}

# example of use
generateWeights(3, 10)

Answer 2

A non-base possibility:

library(partitions)

step <- 0.1
n_weights <- 3

t(restrictedparts(n = 1/step, m = n_weights) * step)
#  [1,] 1.0 0.0 0.0
#  [2,] 0.9 0.1 0.0
#  [3,] 0.8 0.2 0.0
#  [4,] 0.7 0.3 0.0
#  [5,] 0.6 0.4 0.0
#  [6,] 0.5 0.5 0.0
#  [7,] 0.8 0.1 0.1
#  [8,] 0.7 0.2 0.1
#  [9,] 0.6 0.3 0.1
# [10,] 0.5 0.4 0.1
# [11,] 0.6 0.2 0.2
# [12,] 0.5 0.3 0.2
# [13,] 0.4 0.4 0.2
# [14,] 0.4 0.3 0.3