Flawed random number generator?

Question

I used this weighted random number generator.

import random

def weighted_choice(weights):
    totals = []
    running_total = 0

    for w in weights:
        running_total += w
        totals.append(running_total)

    rnd = random.random() * running_total
    for i, total in enumerate(totals):
        if rnd < total:
            return i

as follows:

# The meaning of this dict is a little confusing, so here's the explanation:
# The keys are numbers and values are weights of its occurence and values - 1
# are weights of its disoccurence. You can imagine it like biased coins
# (except for 2 which is fair coin).
probabilities = { 0 : 1.0, 1 : 1.0, 2 : 0.5, 3 : 0.45, 4 : 0.4, 5 : 0.35,
                    6 : 0.3, 7 : 0.25, 8 : 0.2, 9 : 0.15, 10 : 0.1
                  }
  numberOfDeactivations = []
  for number in probabilities.keys():
    x = weighted_choice([probabilities[number], 1 - probabilities[number]])
    if x == 0:
      numberOfDeactivations.append(number)
  print "chance for ", repr(numberOfDeactivations)

I see quite often 7, 8, 9, 10 in the result.

Is there some proof or guarantee that this is correct to probability theory?

Answer 1

This is mathematically correct. It's an application of inverse transform sampling (although the reason it works in this case should be relatively intuitive).

I don't know Python, so I can't say whether there are any subtleties that make this particualr implementation invalid.