numpy.random.multinomial

numpy.random.multinomial(n, pvals, size=None)

Draw samples from a multinomial distribution.

The multinomial distribution is a multivariate generalisation of the binomial distribution. Take an experiment with one of p possible outcomes. An example of such an experiment is throwing a dice, where the outcome can be 1 through 6. Each sample drawn from the distribution represents n such experiments. Its values, X_i = [X_0, X_1, ..., X_p], represent the number of times the outcome was i.

Parameters:

n : int

Number of experiments.

pvals : sequence of floats, length p

Probabilities of each of the p different outcomes. These should sum to 1 (however, the last element is always assumed to account for the remaining probability, as long as sum(pvals[:-1]) <= 1).

size : int or tuple of ints, optional

Output shape. If the given shape is, e.g., (m, n, k), then m * n * k samples are drawn. Default is None, in which case a single value is returned.

Returns:

out : ndarray

The drawn samples, of shape size, if that was provided. If not, the shape is (N,).

In other words, each entry out[i,j,...,:] is an N-dimensional value drawn from the distribution.

Examples

Throw a dice 20 times:

>>> np.random.multinomial(20, [1/6.]*6, size=1)
array([[4, 1, 7, 5, 2, 1]])

It landed 4 times on 1, once on 2, etc.

Now, throw the dice 20 times, and 20 times again:

>>> np.random.multinomial(20, [1/6.]*6, size=2)
array([[3, 4, 3, 3, 4, 3],
       [2, 4, 3, 4, 0, 7]])

For the first run, we threw 3 times 1, 4 times 2, etc. For the second, we threw 2 times 1, 4 times 2, etc.

A loaded dice is more likely to land on number 6:

>>> np.random.multinomial(100, [1/7.]*5)
array([13, 16, 13, 16, 42])