Generate random array of floats between a range

Gabriel picture Gabriel · Feb 27, 2014 · Viewed 131.4k times · Source

I haven't been able to find a function to generate an array of random floats of a given length between a certain range.

I've looked at Random sampling but no function seems to do what I need.

random.uniform comes close but it only returns a single element, not a specific number.

This is what I'm after:

ran_floats = some_function(low=0.5, high=13.3, size=50)

which would return an array of 50 random non-unique floats (ie: repetitions are allowed) uniformly distributed in the range [0.5, 13.3].

Is there such a function?

Answer

JoshAdel picture JoshAdel · Feb 27, 2014

np.random.uniform fits your use case:

sampl = np.random.uniform(low=0.5, high=13.3, size=(50,))

Update Oct 2019:

While the syntax is still supported, it looks like the API changed with NumPy 1.17 to support greater control over the random number generator. Going forward the API has changed and you should look at https://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/reference/random/generated/numpy.random.Generator.uniform.html

The enhancement proposal is here: https://numpy.org/neps/nep-0019-rng-policy.html