Question

What I’m trying to do is make a gaussian function graph. then pick random numbers anywhere in a space say y=[0,1] (because its normalized) & x=[0,200]. Then, I want it to ignore all values above the curve and only keep the values underneath it.

   import numpy
   import random
   import math
   import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
   import matplotlib.mlab as mlab
   from math import sqrt
   from numpy import zeros
   from numpy import numarray

   variance = input("Input variance of the star:")
   mean = input("Input mean of the star:")

   x=numpy.linspace(0,200,1000)
   sigma = sqrt(variance)

   z = max(mlab.normpdf(x,mean,sigma))
   foo = (mlab.normpdf(x,mean,sigma))/z
   plt.plot(x,foo)

   zing = random.random()
   random = random.uniform(0,200)

   import random

   def method2(size):
       ret = set()
       while len(ret) < size:
           ret.add((random.random(), random.uniform(0,200)))
       return ret

   size = input("Input number of simulations:")

   foos = set(foo)
   xx = set(x)

   method = method2(size)

   def undercurve(xx,foos,method):
       Upper = numpy.where(foos<(method))
       Lower = numpy.where(foos[Upper]>(method[Upper]))
       return (xx[Upper])[Lower],(foos[Upper])[Lower]

When I try to print undercurve, I get an error:

    TypeError: 'set' object has no attribute '__getitem__'

and I have no idea how to fix it.

As you can all see, I’m quite new at python and programming in general, but any help is appreciated and if there are any questions I’ll do my best to answer them.

Answer 1

The immediate cause of the error you’re seeing is presumably this line (which should be identified by the full traceback — it’s generally quite helpful to post that):

Lower = numpy.where(foos[Upper]>(method[Upper]))

because the confusingly-named variable method is actually a set, as returned by your function method2. Actually, on second thought, foos is also a set, so it’s probably failing on that first. Sets don’t support indexing with something like the_set[index]; that’s what the complaint about __getitem__ means.

I’m not entirely sure what all the parts of your code are intended to do; variable names like “foos” don’t really help like that. So here’s how I might do what you’re trying to do:

# generate sample points
num_pts = 500
sample_xs = np.random.uniform(0, 200, size=num_pts)
sample_ys = np.random.uniform(0, 1, size=num_pts)

# define distribution
mean = 50
sigma = 10

# figure out "normalized" pdf vals at sample points
max_pdf = mlab.normpdf(mean, mean, sigma)
sample_pdf_vals = mlab.normpdf(sample_xs, mean, sigma) / max_pdf

# which ones are under the curve?
under_curve = sample_ys < sample_pdf_vals

# get pdf vals to plot
x = np.linspace(0, 200, 1000)
pdf_vals = mlab.normpdf(x, mean, sigma) / max_pdf

# plot the samples and the curve
colors = np.array(['cyan' if b else 'red' for b in under_curve])
scatter(sample_xs, sample_ys, c=colors)
plot(x, pdf_vals)

Of course, you should also realize that if you only want the points under the curve, this is equivalent to (but much less efficient than) just sampling from the normal distribution and then randomly selecting a y for each sample uniformly from 0 to the pdf value there:

sample_xs = np.random.normal(mean, sigma, size=num_pts)
max_pdf = mlab.normpdf(mean, mean, sigma)
sample_pdf_vals = mlab.normpdf(sample_xs, mean, sigma) / max_pdf
sample_ys = np.array([np.random.uniform(0, pdf_val) for pdf_val in sample_pdf_vals])