How to choose randomly between two values?
Question:
So basically I’m trying to get a piece of code to randomly choose between two values -40 and 40.
To do so, I was thinking of using good old mathematics like –
random_num = ((-1)^value)*40, where value = {1, 2}.
random_num, as the name suggest should be a random number.
Any help ?
I am using python, solution using libraries is acceptable.
Answers:
Assuming that L
is a list of values you want to choose from, then random.choice(L)
will do the job.
In your case:
import random
L = [-40, 40]
print(random.choice(L))
You can use the choices
function in python to achieve this. If you want values to be chosen to be only -40 or 40, the second argument is the probability/weights.
from random import choices
choices([-40,40], [0.5,0.5])
If you want a random integer values between -40 and +40, then
import random
random.randint(-40, 40)
https://docs.python.org/3.1/library/random.html#random.randint
If you want to choose either -40 or +40, then
import random
random.choice([-40, 40])
https://docs.python.org/3/library/random.html#random.choice
If you really prefer to go with your implementation of choosing either 1 or 2, as in your question, then plug in those values in random.choice method.
Provided the above solutions, since I feel there is some ambiguity in the question.
So basically I’m trying to get a piece of code to randomly choose between two values -40 and 40.
To do so, I was thinking of using good old mathematics like –
random_num = ((-1)^value)*40, where value = {1, 2}.
random_num, as the name suggest should be a random number.
Any help ?
I am using python, solution using libraries is acceptable.
Assuming that L
is a list of values you want to choose from, then random.choice(L)
will do the job.
In your case:
import random
L = [-40, 40]
print(random.choice(L))
You can use the choices
function in python to achieve this. If you want values to be chosen to be only -40 or 40, the second argument is the probability/weights.
from random import choices
choices([-40,40], [0.5,0.5])
If you want a random integer values between -40 and +40, then
import random
random.randint(-40, 40)
https://docs.python.org/3.1/library/random.html#random.randint
If you want to choose either -40 or +40, then
import random
random.choice([-40, 40])
https://docs.python.org/3/library/random.html#random.choice
If you really prefer to go with your implementation of choosing either 1 or 2, as in your question, then plug in those values in random.choice method.
Provided the above solutions, since I feel there is some ambiguity in the question.