RandomChoice does not accept null weights
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg83403] RandomChoice does not accept null weights
- From: Szabolcs Horvát <szhorvat at gmail.com>
- Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2007 06:21:15 -0500 (EST)
RandomChoice does not accept 0 weights.
Example:
In[1]:= RandomChoice[{0,1,2}->{a,b,c}]
During evaluation of In[1]:= RandomChoice::weightv: The weights given on
the left-hand side of {0,1,2}->{a,b,c} should be a list of positive
numerical quantities having the same length as the list given on the
right-hand side. >>
Out[1]= RandomChoice[{0,1,2}->{a,b,c}]
Is this the intended behaviour?
Of course it is very easy to work around this problem by either adding a
very small number to all weights, or Pick[]ing out those elements whose
weight is not 0 before passing them to RandomChoice[].
But in many situations it would be very useful if RandomChoice accepted
0 as a weight ...
Szabolcs