In this article, we will discuss how to randomly select n elements from the list in Python. Before moving on to the approaches let’s discuss Random Module which we are going to use in our approaches.
A random module returns random values. It is useful when we want to generate random values. Some of the methods of Random module are:- seed(), getstate(), choice(), sample() etc.
Select randomly n elements from a list using randrange()
Here, we are using the random randrange() function to return a single random number from a list.
Python3
import randomlist = [1, 2, 3, 4]get_index = random.randrange(len(letters))print(letters[get_index]) |
Output:
3
Time Complexity: O(n) where n is the number of elements in the list
Auxiliary Space: O(1), here constant extra space is required
Selecting more than one random element from a list using sample()
The sample() method is used to return the required list of items from a given sequence. This method does not allow duplicate elements in a sequence.
python3
# importing random moduleimport random# declaring listlist = [2, 2, 4, 6, 6, 8]# initializing the value of nn = 4# printing n elements from listprint(random.sample(list, n)) |
Output:
[8, 6, 6, 4]
Selecting more than one random element from a list using choices()
Here, we are using the random choices() function to return more than one random number from a list.
Python3
# importing random moduleimport random# declaring listlist = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f']# initializing the value of nn = 4# printing n elements from listprint(random.choices(list, k=n)) |
Output:
['d', 'd', 'f', 'a']
Select randomly n elements from a list using choice()
The choice() method is used to return a random number from given sequence. The sequence can be a list or a tuple. This returns a single value from available data that considers duplicate values in the sequence(list).
python3
# importing random moduleimport random# declaring listlist = [2, 2, 4, 6, 6, 8]# initializing the value of nn = 4# traversing and printing random elementsfor i in range(n): # end = " " so that we get output in single line print(random.choice(list), end = " ") |
Output :
8 2 4 6
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