How to Randomly Select Elements From a List in Python

Introduction

Selecting a random element or value from a list is a common task – be it for randomized result from a list of recommendations or just a random prompt.

In this article, we’ll take a look at how to randomly select elements from a list in Python. We’ll cover the retrieval of both singular random elements, as well as retrieving multiple elements – with and without repetition.

Selecting a Random Element From Python List

The most intuitive and natural approach to solve this problem is to generate a random number that acts as an index to access an element from the list.

To implement this approach, let’s look at some methods to generate random numbers in Python: random.randint() and random.randrange(). We can additionally use random.choise() and supply an iterable – which results in a random element from that iterable being returned back.

Using random.randint()

random.randint(a,