I suspect I've found a documentation error in the above mentioned link (http://docs.python.org/library/random.html); regarding random.randint(a, b), the documentation says "Return a random integer N such that a <= N <= b", however when actually using the function, it does seem to be a <= N < b.

 

Running Python 2.6, the built-in help returns

 

Type:           builtin_function_or_method
Base Class:     <type 'builtin_function_or_method'>
String Form:    <built-in method randint of mtrand.RandomState object at 0x01466
340>
Namespace:      Interactive
Docstring:
    randint(low, high=None, size=None)

Return random integers from `low` (inclusive) to `high` (exclusive).

Return random integers from the "discrete uniform" distribution in the
"half-open" interval [`low`, `high`). If `high` is None (the default),
then results are from [0, `low`).