[FIXED] What is the numpy equivalent of random.sample?

Issue

I want to randomly choose 2 elements out of a list.

>>> import random
>>> random.sample(["foo", "bar", "baz", "quux"], 2)
['quux', 'bar']

But I want to use a numpy.random.Generator to do it, rather than using Python's global random number generator. Is there a built-in or easy way to do this?

>>> import numpy as np
>>> gen = np.random.default_rng()
>>> ???

[edit] the point is to make use of gen which allows you to seed it for reproducibility. I realize the same can hypothetically be accomplished by re-seeding global generators, but I specifically want to use gen, a local generator, rather than relying on global generators.

Solution

If you really want to do it from the numpy.random.Generator:

import numpy as np
gen = np.random.default_rng()
gen.choice(["foo", "bar", "baz", "quux"], 2, replace=False)

Note that np.random.choice selects with replacement by default (i.e. each item can be sampled multiple times), so turn this off if you want an equivalent method to random.sample (credit: @ayhan).

Answered By - Nathan