Question

I am trying to get a random element from an array’s single dimension in Python. So in the case below, I would like to retrieve any one of the 5 floats.

ar = rand(1, 5)

ar = array([[ 0.29889882,  0.84955019,  0.52989055,  0.57220576,  0.16841406]])

I have been able to retrieve a float if there are 5 elements and only one dimension
(ar = rand(5, 1)),

using:

ar[randrange(0, p.size)]

but how do I get a value from an array from a single dimension?

Answer 1

Assuming you are referring to numpy.array, you can use the following:

>>> import numpy as np
>>> np.array([[ 0.29889882, 0.84955019, 0.52989055, 0.57220576, 0.16841406]])
array([[ 0.29889882,  0.84955019,  0.52989055,  0.57220576,  0.16841406]])
>>> 
>>> 
>>> ar = np.array([[ 0.29889882, 0.84955019, 0.52989055, 0.57220576, 0.16841406]])
>>> ar[:, random.randint(0,4)]
array([ 0.29889882])
>>> ar[:, random.randint(0,4)]
array([ 0.52989055])