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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]}, optional

Output shape. If the given shape is, e.g., (m, n, k), then m * n * k samples are drawn from the 1-d a. If a has more than one dimension, the size shape will be inserted into the axis dimension, so the output ndim will be a.ndim - 1 + len(size). Default is None, in which case a single value is returned.

replace : bool, optional

Whether the sample is with or without replacement. Default is True, meaning that a value of a can be selected multiple times.

p : 1-D array_like, optional

The probabilities associated with each entry in a. If not given, the sample assumes a uniform distribution over all entries in a.

axis : int, optional

The axis along which the selection is performed. The default, 0, selects by row.

shuffle : bool, optional

Whether the sample is shuffled when sampling without replacement. Default is True, False provides a speedup.

Returns

samples : single item or ndarray

The generated random samples

Raises

: ValueError

If 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)
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])
Generate a uniform random sample from np.arange(5) of size 3 without replacement:
rng.choice(5, 3, replace=False)
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)
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])
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])

See also

integers
permutation
shuffle

Aliases

  • numpy.random.Generator.choice

Referenced by