To Robert's point, the following should give you the result. 

Let y be this array that provides the "weighting" factor you were talking about. 

result = numpy.random.multinomial(300, y.ravel()).reshape(y.shape)

This should be the array you are looking for. 

-Travis





On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 4:03 AM, Robert Kern <robert.kern@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 8:54 AM, Johannes Radinger <johannesradinger@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I'd like to randomly populate a numpy array (100,100) so that the numpy.sum() of the array equals exactly 300
> (e.g. distribute 300 rice grains on a chess board). The final array should only contain integers (so no floats) from
> 0 to X (max 300).  Furthermore I'd like to use a weighing factor, so that some of my array-cells are more probably to
> be populated than others. Therefore I have an array of the same size (100,100) and that is in numpy.sum = 1:
>
> x = numpy.random.random_sample((10,10))
> y = x/numpy.sum(x)
>
> Some side conditions: Of course if one cell has exactly 0 as weighing factor, also the result has to be 0 for that
> cell. If only one cell has a weighing factor at all (all others are 0) the entire 300 has to be assigned to that cell.

You are describing a multinomial distribution:

http://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/reference/generated/numpy.random.multinomial.html

--
Robert Kern

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--

Travis Oliphant
Continuum Analytics, Inc.
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