[Python-ideas] random.boolean or bernoulli

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Joao S. O. Bueno writes:

 > What about  just:
 > 
 > def chance(n=0.5):
 >       return random() < n

n=0.5 just isn't that special.  Anyway, EIBTI.

Also, I almost certainly wouldn't bother to use random.chance() if it
existed.  I'd simply use application-specific definitions like

def random_gender():
    return 'female' if random() < p else 'male'

(it's quite rare that I actually want True and False as the values of
chance()-like functions).

 > As for "unnecessary baggage"  --about half the random module -
 > randrange, randint, uniform, choice,could be viewed as "unecessary
 > baggae"

Sure, this is always in the eye of the beholder.  My taste is that the
module gets it about right.  I've never needed the full functionality
of randrange, but I can imagine others using it fairly frequently, and
if I did need it it's cheaper to look it up than to code it up.  I do
often use "choice" and somewhat less often "shuffle".  These are
somewhat tedious to implement.

OTOH, to a mathematician, random() immediately makes one want to ask,
"what distribution?"  So uniform() really is needed.