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Python Python Basics (2015) Letter Game App Random Item

Posted by Ryan Felton
Ryan Felton
1,471 Points

not sure what to do

help

item.py 
import random 
def random_item(sample):
    random_item=random.randint(0,len(sample)-1)
    return sample

1 Answer

Jeffrey James
Jeffrey James
2,636 Points
Jeffrey James
Jeffrey James
2,636 Points

You're returning the function argument:

import random 
def random_item(sample):
    random_item=random.randint(0,len(sample)-1)
    return random_item

Try something like returning "random_item", which is the variable you likely intended to return. 

>>> import random 
>>> def random_item(sample):
...     random_item=random.randint(0,len(sample)-1)
...     return random_item
... 
>>> random_item([1,3,44,90])
3
>>> [random_item([1,3,44,90]) for x in range(100)]
[0, 2, 0, 2, 3, 1, 2, 0, 3, 1, 2, 0, 3, 2, 3, 2, 0, 1, 0, 1, 3, 0, 1, 0, 3, 3, 3, 1, 2, 1, 1, 2, 2, 0, 3, 0, 0, 3, 1, 0, 3, 3, 1, 3, 3, 0, 3, 3, 0, 1, 0, 3, 2, 2, 1, 1, 3, 1, 2, 3, 2, 3, 0, 3, 1, 0, 2, 2, 0, 2, 0, 3, 1, 0, 3, 1, 3, 3, 3, 0, 3, 0, 2, 0, 1, 1, 1, 3, 3, 0, 2, 3, 1, 0, 3, 3, 0, 0, 0, 2]
Jeffrey James
Jeffrey James
2,636 Points
Jeffrey James
Jeffrey James
2,636 Points

Also, based on the func you wrote, I would imagine you want to return a random element from the input list? You're just choosing a random integer based on the length of the input array. Try using another method from the random module

>>> dir(random)
['BPF', 'LOG4', 'NV_MAGICCONST', 'RECIP_BPF', 'Random', 'SG_MAGICCONST', 'SystemRandom', 'TWOPI', '_BuiltinMethodType', '_MethodType', '_Sequence', '_Set', '__all__', '__builtins__', '__cached__', '__doc__', '__file__', '__loader__', '__name__', '__package__', '__spec__', '_acos', '_ceil', '_cos', '_e', '_exp', '_inst', '_log', '_pi', '_random', '_sha512', '_sin', '_sqrt', '_test', '_test_generator', '_urandom', '_warn', 'betavariate', 'choice', 'expovariate', 'gammavariate', 'gauss', 'getrandbits', 'getstate', 'lognormvariate', 'normalvariate', 'paretovariate', 'randint', 'random', 'randrange', 'sample', 'seed', 'setstate', 'shuffle', 'triangular', 'uniform', 'vonmisesvariate', 'weibullvariate']
Ryan Felton
Ryan Felton
1,471 Points

I'm still not understanding