bundles / numpy 2.5.0.dev0+git20251130.2de293a / numpy / random / _generator / Generator / choice
cython_function_or_method
numpy.random._generator:Generator.choice
Signature
def choice(a, size = None, replace = True, p = None, axis = 0, shuffle = True)Summary
Generates a random sample from a given array
Parameters
a: {array_like, int}If an ndarray, a random sample is generated from its elements. If an int, the random sample is generated from np.arange(a).
size: {int, tuple[int]}, optionalOutput shape. If the given shape is, e.g.,
(m, n, k), thenm * n * ksamples are drawn from the 1-da. Ifahas more than one dimension, thesizeshape will be inserted into theaxisdimension, so the outputndimwill bea.ndim - 1 + len(size). Default is None, in which case a single value is returned.replace: bool, optionalWhether the sample is with or without replacement. Default is True, meaning that a value of
acan be selected multiple times.p: 1-D array_like, optionalThe probabilities associated with each entry in a. If not given, the sample assumes a uniform distribution over all entries in
a.axis: int, optionalThe axis along which the selection is performed. The default, 0, selects by row.
shuffle: bool, optionalWhether the sample is shuffled when sampling without replacement. Default is True, False provides a speedup.
Returns
samples: single item or ndarrayThe generated random samples
Raises
: ValueErrorIf a is an int and less than zero, if p is not 1-dimensional, if a is array-like with a size 0, if p is not a vector of probabilities, if a and p have different lengths, or if replace=False and the sample size is greater than the population size.
Notes
Setting user-specified probabilities through p uses a more general but less efficient sampler than the default. The general sampler produces a different sample than the optimized sampler even if each element of p is 1 / len(a).
p must sum to 1 when cast to float64. To ensure this, you may wish to normalize using p = p / np.sum(p, dtype=float).
When passing a as an integer type and size is not specified, the return type is a native Python int.
Examples
Generate a uniform random sample from np.arange(5) of size 3:rng = np.random.default_rng()
✓rng.choice(5, 3)
✗array([4, 3, 3])Generate a non-uniform random sample from np.arange(5) of size 3:
rng.choice(5, 3, p=[0.1, 0, 0.3, 0.6, 0])
✗array([3, 3, 2])Generate a uniform random sample from np.arange(5) of size 3 without replacement:
rng.choice(5, 3, replace=False)
✗array([2, 1, 4])Generate a uniform random sample from a 2-D array along the first axis (the default), without replacement:
rng.choice([[0, 1, 2], [3, 4, 5], [6, 7, 8]], 2, replace=False)
✗array([[0, 1, 2],
[6, 7, 8]])
Generate a non-uniform random sample from np.arange(5) of size
3 without replacement:
rng.choice(5, 3, replace=False, p=[0.1, 0, 0.3, 0.6, 0])
✗array([2, 3, 0])Any of the above can be repeated with an arbitrary array-like instead of just integers. For instance:
aa_milne_arr = ['pooh', 'rabbit', 'piglet', 'Christopher']
✓rng.choice(aa_milne_arr, 5, p=[0.5, 0.1, 0.1, 0.3])
✗array(['rabbit', 'pooh', 'pooh', 'pooh', 'pooh'], dtype='<U11')
See also
Aliases
numpy.random.Generator.choice