southof40 wrote in news:da3cc892-b6dd-4b37-a6e6- b606ef967...@t26g2000prt.googlegroups.com in gmane.comp.python.general:
> I have list of of N Vehicle objects - the only possible vehicles are > cars, bikes, trucks. > > I want to select an object from the list with a probability of : cars > 0.7, bikes 0.3, trucks 0.1. Aside, all your probabilities add up to 1.1, they should add up to 1. > I've currently implemented this by creating another list in which each > car object from the original list appears 7 times, each bike 3 times > and each truck once. I then pick at random from that list. Aside, so 7 / 11 bikes, 3 / 11 cars and 1 / 11 trucks, are your actual probabilities. But to answer your question, you could create 3 list, and then pick the list you draw from based on a random number then pick the item from the list based on another random number: r = ( random() * 11 ) if r < 1: picklist = truck_list elif r < 4: picklist = bike_list else: picklist = car_list # now pick the final item from pick list. Rob. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
