Python tip 5: random choice and sample

Here are a couple of commonly used methods for the built-in random module:

• choice() method helps you get a random element
• sample() method helps you get a list of a specific count of random elements

>>> import random
>>> nums = [1, 4, 5, 2, 51, 3, 6, 22]

>>> random.choice(nums)
3

>>> random.sample(nums, k=4)
[51, 2, 3, 1]

>>> random.sample(range(1000), k=5)
[490, 26, 9, 745, 919]

Both these methods will work on any sequence object. The sample() method also accepts a set object, but that will be deprecated.

Video demo:

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