How to split/partition a dataset into training and test datasets for, e.g., cross validation?

Question

What is a good way to split a NumPy array randomly into training and testing/validation dataset? Something similar to the cvpartition or crossvalind

Answer 1

You may also consider stratified division into training and testing set. Startified division also generates training and testing set randomly but in such a way that original class proportions are preserved. This makes training and testing sets better reflect the properties of the original dataset.

import numpy as np  

def get_train_test_inds(y,train_proportion=0.7):
    '''Generates indices, making random stratified split into training set and testing sets
    with proportions train_proportion and (1-train_proportion) of initial sample.
    y is any iterable indicating classes of each observation in the sample.
    Initial proportions of classes inside training and 
    testing sets are preserved (stratified sampling).
    '''

    y=np.array(y)
    train_inds = np.zeros(len(y),dtype=bool)
    test_inds = np.zeros(len(y),dtype=bool)
    values = np.unique(y)
    for value in values:
        value_inds = np.nonzero(y==value)[0]
        np.random.shuffle(value_inds)
        n = int(train_proportion*len(value_inds))

        train_inds[value_inds[:n]]=True
        test_inds[value_inds[n:]]=True

    return train_inds,test_inds

y = np.array([1,1,2,2,3,3])
train_inds,test_inds = get_train_test_inds(y,train_proportion=0.5)
print y[train_inds]
print y[test_inds]

This code outputs:

[1 2 3]
[1 2 3]