Python function that simulates rolling dice based on input parameters 1) number of dice 2) Number of rolls

Question

I have been looking on stack and spend several hours browsing to try and solve this. Task is:
Write a Python function called dicerolls that simulates rolling dice. Your function should take two parameters: the number of dice k and the number of times to roll the dice n. The function should simulate randomly rolling k dice n times, keeping track of each total face value. It should then return a dictionary with the number of times each possible total face value occurred. So, calling the function as diceroll(k=2, n=1000) should return a dictionary like: {2:19,3:50,4:82,5:112,6:135,7:174,8:133,9:114,10:75,11:70,12:36}

So far I have managed to define the dice function but where I am struggling is to add the k(number of rolls) into the dicerolls function. What I have so far:

from numpy import random

def dice():
    return random.randint(1, 7)

def diceroll(number_of_times):
    counter = {n : 0 for n in range(2, 13)}

    for i in range(number_of_times):
        first_dice = dice()
        second_dice = dice()
        total = first_dice + second_dice
        counter[total] += 1
    return counter

diceroll(1000)

Output: {2: 19, 3: 49, 4: 96, 5: 112, 6: 150, 7: 171, 8: 151, 9: 90, 10: 89, 11: 47, 12: 26}

Any suggestions are appreciated.

Edited code after answer

import random

def diceroll(k, n, dice_sides=6):
    # prepare dictionary with zero values for all possible results
    counter = {n : 0 for n in range(k, k*dice_sides + 1)}

    # roll all the dice
    for i in range(n):
        dice_sum = sum(random.choices(range(1, dice_sides + 1), k = k))
        counter[dice_sum] += 1
    return counter

diceroll(k=2, n=1000)

Output: {2: 20, 3: 49, 4: 91, 5: 116, 6: 140, 7: 138, 8: 173, 9: 112, 10: 72, 11: 65, 12: 24}

Answer 1

You can leverage the random function that provides multiple rolls of the same funciton at once: random.choices(iterable, k=number of results). This is faster then rolling 1 dice multiple times and add the values up.

You would need to change your code to:

import random


def diceroll(number_of_dices, number_of_times, dice_sides=6):
    # prepare dictionary with zero values for all possible results
    counter = {n : 0 for n in range(number_of_dices, number_of_dices*dice_sides + 1)}

    # roll all the dice
    for i in range(number_of_times):
        dice_sum = sum(random.choices(range(1, dice_sides + 1), k = number_of_dices))
        counter[dice_sum] += 1

    return counter

print(diceroll(3, 100))

Output:

{ 3:  0,  4: 1,  5: 1,  6: 7,  7: 10,  8: 10,  9: 16, 10: 10, 
 11: 19, 12: 8, 13: 8, 14: 3, 15:  4, 16: 2,  17:  1, 18: 0}