pick randomly a certain fraction of numbers from a list

[Skip Montanaro]

    >> Does anybody know a quick way of picking randomly x% of elements from
    >> a list.  e.g. If I have a list of 50 elements, how do I randomly
    >> choose 2% of it?  The trivial way would be to iterate with the
    >> random.choice() function.  Is there any better way?

How about

    random.shuffle(mylist)
    picks = mylist[:int(len(mylist)*0.02)]

?  Actually, since 2% of 50 is 1, this would work for your particular case:

    random.shuffle(mylist)
    picks = mylist[:1]

<wink>

Skip