On Jun 12, 2:09 pm, Steven D'Aprano <st...@remove-this- cybersource.com.au> wrote: > On Sat, 12 Jun 2010 03:05:43 -0700, Javier Montoya wrote: > > Dear all, > > > I need to generate a vector of random float numbers between [0,1] such > > that their sum equals 1 and that are distributed non-uniformly. Is there > > any python function that generates such a vector? > > You haven't explained your requirements in anywhere near enough detail. > Any of these match your description: > > [1.0] > [0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0] > [0.1, 0.1, 0.1, 0.1, 0.1, 0.1, 0.1, 0.3] > [0.01, 0.01, 0.01, 0.01, 0.02, 0.02, 0.02, 0.03, 0.03, 0.84] > > and many, many more. What do you mean by "non-uniformly"? Do you have any > specific distribution in mind? Do you have to have a particular number of > items? > > For instance, you could do this: > > L = [] > total = 0.0 > while total < 1: > x = random.uniform(0, 1-total) > L.append(x) > total += x > > assert sum(L) == total == 1.0 > > -- > Steven
Hi Steven, The number of items in the vector is usually between [4,15]. I was having in mind sth. like: [0.25, 0.23, 0.30, 0.22] for the 4 elems case. Best wishes -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
