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Python: I have a list of probabilities, and I want to use them to generate mutations in a protein sequence

I have a list of probabilities that I have generated. Here is a short snippet of what this variable looks like

[0.62, 0.20. 0.0, 0.69, 0.24, 0.50, ...]

These are probabilities that an amino acid substitution will happen in a protein sequence. What I want to do is to take this list of probabilities and generate a list of either True or False values based on the probability. I have tried to do this using the numpy.random.choice module in python 

numpy.random.choice(a, size=None, replace=True, p=None)

However, when I enter my value for p (the probability distribution) as the variable probabilities which is my list of probabilities, the interpreter gives the error that p does not sum to 1. I know that p does not sum to 1, so I don't think this is the right python module to use for my purposes. Is there a different way to simply go through a list of probabilities and use those probabilities to either generate True or False?

python pdb dssp
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updated by e.benn e.benn • written by westin.kosater • westin.kosater

1 answer

As simple as:

import random
a = [0.62, 0.20. 0.0, 0.69, 0.24, 0.50]
b = [random.random()<x for x in a]

You sample a number in the range [0,1) and ask if the number is smaller than the value, for each value in a.

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written by Asaf Asaf

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