pick randomly a certain fraction of numbers from a list

[Jp Calderone]

On Fri, Feb 14, 2003 at 12:59:41PM -0600, Skip Montanaro wrote:
>     >> 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]

  As does

    picks = [random.choice(mylist)]

  <2%-wink>

  Jp

--
 up 6 days, 0:29, 5 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 196 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20030214/ced74c29/attachment.sig>