Shuffle an array with python, randomize array item

Question

What's the easiest way to shuffle an array with python?

Answer 1

# arr = numpy array to shuffle

def shuffle(arr):
    a = numpy.arange(len(arr))
    b = numpy.empty(1)
    for i in range(len(arr)):
        sel = numpy.random.random_integers(0, high=len(a)-1, size=1)
        b = numpy.append(b, a[sel])
        a = numpy.delete(a, sel)
    b = b[1:].astype(int)
    return arr[b]

Answer 2

sorted(array, key = lambda x: random.random())

Answer 3

I don't know I used random.shuffle() but it return 'None' to me, so I wrote this, might helpful to someone

def shuffle(arr):
    for n in range(len(arr) - 1):
        rnd = random.randint(0, (len(arr) - 1))
        val1 = arr[rnd]
        val2 = arr[rnd - 1]

        arr[rnd - 1] = val1
        arr[rnd] = val2

    return arr

Answer 4

Alternative way to do this using sklearn

from sklearn.utils import shuffle
X=[1,2,3]
y = ['one', 'two', 'three']
X, y = shuffle(X, y, random_state=0)
print(X)
print(y)

Output:

[2, 1, 3]
['two', 'one', 'three']

Advantage: You can random multiple arrays simultaneously without disrupting the mapping. And 'random_state' can control the shuffling for reproducible behavior.

Answer 5

When dealing with regular Python lists, random.shuffle() will do the job just as the previous answers show.

But when it come to ndarray(numpy.array), random.shuffle seems to break the original ndarray. Here is an example:

import random
import numpy as np
import numpy.random

a = np.array([1,2,3,4,5,6])
a.shape = (3,2)
print a
random.shuffle(a) # a will definitely be destroyed
print a

Just use: np.random.shuffle(a)

Like random.shuffle, np.random.shuffle shuffles the array in-place.

Answer 6

import random
random.shuffle(array)