A weighted version of random.choice

Question

I needed to write a weighted version of random.choice (each element in the list has a different probability for being selected). This is what I came up with:

Answer 1

Provide random.choice() with a pre-weighted list:

Solution & Test:

import random

options = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']
weights = [1, 2, 5, 2]

weighted_options = [[opt]*wgt for opt, wgt in zip(options, weights)]
weighted_options = [opt for sublist in weighted_options for opt in sublist]
print(weighted_options)

# test

counts = {c: 0 for c in options}
for x in range(10000):
    counts[random.choice(weighted_options)] += 1

for opt, wgt in zip(options, weights):
    wgt_r = counts[opt] / 10000 * sum(weights)
    print(opt, counts[opt], wgt, wgt_r)

Output:

['a', 'b', 'b', 'c', 'c', 'c', 'c', 'c', 'd', 'd']
a 1025 1 1.025
b 1948 2 1.948
c 5019 5 5.019
d 2008 2 2.008