Abstract: Systems and methods are provided for sorting cells with distinct cell designs for characterizing a library of the cell designs. The present disclosure uses randomized sorting rules associated with bins and pseudo-random numbers to counts the cells with measured fluorescence values in one of the bins. A mean fluorescence value for a cell design group may be determined based on a ratio of cell counts of the cells associated with the cell design group across the bins. Unlike the traditional histogram-based sorting that use a mean fluorescence value of a bin, the disclosed technology determines mean fluorescence values of cell design groups for characterizing libraries of the cell design group. Use of the mean fluorescence values with unbiased “sort-seq” and a de-multiplexed sequencing using the mean fluorescence values enables characterizing libraries of cell designs with improved accuracy over traditional use of discrete histograms.