Checkpoint 6.5.1.
Q-4: The ________ module provides functions that generate pseudorandom numbers
Section 6.5 Random numbers
If you give most computer programs the same input multiple times, they will always produce exactly the same output. Programs like this are said to be deterministic. Determinism is usually a good thing, since we expect the same calculation to yield the same result. For some applications, though, we want the computer to be unpredictable. Games are an obvious example, but there are more.
Making a program truly nondeterministic turns out to be no easy task, but there are ways to make programs at least seem nondeterministic. One way is to use algorithms that generate pseudorandom numbers. Pseudorandom numbers are not truly random because they are generated by a deterministic computation, but just by looking at the numbers, it is all but impossible to distinguish them from a truly random set.
The
random module provides functions that generate pseudorandom numbers (which I will simply call “random” from here on).The function
random returns a random float between 0.0 and 1.0 (including 0.0 but not 1.0). Each time you call random, you get the next number in a long series. To see a sample, run this loop:This program produced the following list of 10 random numbers between 0.0 and up to but not including 1.0 when I ran it. Notice how the numbers you got above are different than the ones below, which were generated earlier.
0.11132867921152356 0.5950949227890241 0.04820265884996877 0.841003109276478 0.997914947094958 0.04842330803368111 0.7416295948208405 0.510535245390327 0.27447040171978143 0.028511805472785867
Run the program more than once and see what numbers you get.
The
random function is only one of many functions that handle random numbers. The function randint takes the parameters low and high, and returns an integer between low and high (including both).To choose an element from a sequence at random, you can use
choice:Checkpoint 6.5.2.
Construct a block of code that correctly generates a random integer between 1 and 100 (inclusive), then prints it out. Hint: there are two code blocks that are not used.
Checkpoint 6.5.3.
Construct a block of code that correctly generates a random number from the list called “nums”, then prints it out. Hint: there are four code blocks that are not used.
