Generate random numbers with a given (numerical) distribution

Question

I have a file with some probabilities for different values e.g.:

1 0.1
2 0.05
3 0.05
4 0.2
5 0.4
6 0.2

I would like to generate random numb

Answer 1

from __future__ import division
import random
from collections import Counter


def num_gen(num_probs):
    # calculate minimum probability to normalize
    min_prob = min(prob for num, prob in num_probs)
    lst = []
    for num, prob in num_probs:
        # keep appending num to lst, proportional to its probability in the distribution
        for _ in range(int(prob/min_prob)):
            lst.append(num)
    # all elems in lst occur proportional to their distribution probablities
    while True:
        # pick a random index from lst
        ind = random.randint(0, len(lst)-1)
        yield lst[ind]

Verification:

gen = num_gen([(1, 0.1),
               (2, 0.05),
               (3, 0.05),
               (4, 0.2),
               (5, 0.4),
               (6, 0.2)])
lst = []
times = 10000
for _ in range(times):
    lst.append(next(gen))
# Verify the created distribution:
for item, count in Counter(lst).iteritems():
    print '%d has %f probability' % (item, count/times)

1 has 0.099737 probability
2 has 0.050022 probability
3 has 0.049996 probability 
4 has 0.200154 probability
5 has 0.399791 probability
6 has 0.200300 probability