[issue18844] allow weights in random.choice

[Steven Basart]

Steven Basart added the comment:

Okay so I added a few lines of code.  One to make it return a single number if amount == 1 and the other to check that the amount > 1.

The main difference I've noticed between this implementation and previous versions compared to say R is that in R they provide a boolean flag to ask if sampling with replacement.

Here's there documentation and source code:
https://github.com/wch/r-source/blob/e5b21d0397c607883ff25cca379687b86933d730/src/library/base/man/sample.Rd

https://github.com/wch/r-source/blob/e5b21d0397c607883ff25cca379687b86933d730/src/library/base/R/sample.R

Maybe someone else can comment more on the use cases.  I can only say for myself that I've needed this function plenty of times when working with samples that have a non uniform distribution.

----------
Added file: http://bugs.python.org/file42385/weighted_choice_v3.patch

_______________________________________
Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue18844>
_______________________________________