Generating evenly distributed multiples/samples within a range

Question

Specific instance of Problem
I have an int range from 1-100. I want to generate n total numbers within this range that are as evenly distributed

Answer 1

The problem with using range is that the step must be an integer and so you get rounding issues, such as steps(1,100,4) == [1, 33, 66, 100]. If you want integer outputs but want as even a step as possible, use a float as your step.

>>> def steps(start,end,n):
...    step = (end-start)/float(n-1)
...    return [int(round(start+i*step)) for i in range(n)]

>>> steps(1,100,5)
>>> [1, 26, 51, 75, 100]
>>> steps(1,100,4)
>>> [1, 34, 67, 100]
>>> steps(1,100,2)
>>> [1, 100]
>>>