How to Choose Randomly Between Two Values? [Duplicate]

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.

Accepted Answer

If you want a random integer values between -40 and +40, then

import random
random.randint(-40, 40)

If you want to choose either -40 or +40, then

 import random
 random.choice([-40, 40])

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.

Answer 2

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))

Answer 3

It is simple in Python:

Python 3.7.3 (default, Mar 27 2019, 13:36:35) 
[GCC 9.0.1 20190227 (Red Hat 9.0.1-0.8)] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from random import choice
>>> choice((-40, 40))
40
>>>

Answer 4

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])

How to Choose Randomly Between Two Values? [Duplicate]

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Robert Thorne