2017-01-18 9:35 GMT+01:00 Nadav Har'El <n...@scylladb.com>:
>
> On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 1:58 AM, aleba...@gmail.com <aleba...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> 2017-01-17 22:13 GMT+01:00 Nadav Har'El <n...@scylladb.com>:
>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jan 17, 2017 at 7:18 PM, aleba...@gmail.com <aleba...@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi Nadav,
>>>>
>>>> I may be wrong, but I think that the result of the current
>>>> implementation is actually the expected one.
>>>> Using you example: probabilities for item 1, 2 and 3 are: 0.2, 0.4 and
>>>> 0.4
>>>>
>>>> P([1,2]) = P([2] | 1st=[1]) P([1]) + P([1] | 1st=[2]) P([2])
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, this formula does fit well with the actual algorithm in the code.
>>> But, my question is *why* we want this formula to be correct:
>>>
>>> Just a note: this formula is correct and it is one of statistics
>> fundamental law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_total_probability
>> + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes%27_theorem
>>
>
> Hi,
>
> Yes, of course the formula is correct, but it doesn't mean we're not
> applying it in the wrong context.
>
> I'll be honest here: I came to numpy.random.choice after I actually coded
> a similar algorithm (with the same results) myself, because like you I
> thought this was the "obvious" and correct algorithm. Only then I realized
> that its output doesn't actually produce the desired probabilities
> specified by the user - even in the cases where that is possible. And I
> started wondering if existing libraries - like numpy - do this differently.
> And it turns out, numpy does it (basically) in the same way as my algorithm.
>
>
>>
>> Thus, the result we get from random.choice IMHO definitely makes sense.
>>
>
> Let's look at what the user asked this function, and what it returns:
>
> User asks: please give me random pairs of the three items, where item 1
> has probability 0.2, item 2 has 0.4, and 3 has 0.4.
>
> Function returns: random pairs, where if you make many random returned
> results (as in the law of large numbers) and look at the items they
> contain, item 1 is 0.2333 of the items, item 2 is 0.38333, and item 3 is
> 0.38333.
> These are not (quite) the probabilities the user asked for...
>
> Can you explain a sense where the user's requested probabilities (0.2,
> 0.4, 0.4) are actually adhered in the results which random.choice returns?
>
I think that the question the user is asking by specifying p is a slightly
different one:
"please give me random pairs of the three items extracted from a
population of 3 items where item 1 has probability of being extracted of
0.2, item 2 has 0.4, and 3 has 0.4. Also please remove extract items once
extracted."
> Thanks,
> Nadav Har'El.
>
>
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>
>
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