Random changes in a list of binary numbers

I have a list of N integers, e.g. intList=[1,7,3,1,5] with N=5 and all integers have a binary representation of lenght l, e.g. binList=["001","111","011","001","101"] with l=3. Now I want to add random flips from 1->0 & 0->1. Each of the l positions should flip with a probabiliy mu. (mu varies over many magnitudes & N is around 100-100000) This happens over many iterations. Currently my code is

@nb.njit()
for x in range(iterations):
...other code...
for number in range(N):
for position in range(l):
if random.random() < mu:
intList[number] = intList[number] ^ (1 << position)
...other code...


The numba decorator is necessary. Since this part takes most of the execution time I just want to make sure that it is already optimal. Thanks for any comment!

• What is the expected magnitude of n and l?
– vnp
Nov 14, 2020 at 20:53
• Please do not update the code in your question to incorporate feedback from answers, doing so goes against the Question + Answer style of Code Review. This is not a forum where you should keep the most updated version in your question. Please see what you may and may not do after receiving answers. Nov 16, 2020 at 12:39
• You may post the benchmark as an answer. Updating the question based on feedbacks is prohibited on the forum.
– GZ0
Nov 16, 2020 at 13:43
• @GZ0 Where exactly does it say so? We even frequently request updating questions (usually for clarity). Nov 16, 2020 at 13:54
• @HighwayJohn Some people with too much power apparently prefer not to read and think, so yeah, better post it as an answer. Might even gain some upvotes. Nov 16, 2020 at 13:59

It is absolutely not optimal for a small mu. It's generally more efficient to first generate how many bits you'd like to flip using a Binomial distribution, and then sample the indices. However, then we have to generate words with k set bits, which involves more expensive RNG calls. However when mu is very small and l is very large, this is the most efficient method.

But for l that fit inside a single computer word, we can be more efficient. Note that we can first solve the problem for a small w <= l (like 8 or 16), and then combine multiple copies of these w into a single larger integer.

Our main technique is to precompute an alias method table for all integers up to width w to sample them according to the number of bits set. This is actually feasible for small w (say, up to 16). So without further ado:

import numpy as np
from collections import deque

class VoseAliasMethod:
# Vose's Alias Method as described at https://www.keithschwarz.com/darts-dice-coins/.
def __init__(self, weights):
pmf = weights / np.sum(weights)
self.n = pmf.shape[0]
self.prob = np.zeros(self.n, dtype=np.float64)
self.alias = np.zeros(self.n, dtype=np.int64)

p = pmf * self.n
small = deque(np.nonzero(p < 1.0)[0])
large = deque(np.nonzero(p >= 1.0)[0])
while small and large:
l = small.popleft()
g = large.popleft()
self.prob[l] = p[l]
self.alias[l] = g
p[g] = (p[g] + p[l]) - 1.0
(small if p[g] < 1.0 else large).append(g)
self.prob[small] = 1.0
self.prob[large] = 1.0

def sample(self, size):
ri = np.random.randint(0, self.n, size=size)
rx = np.random.uniform(size=size)
return np.where(rx < self.prob[ri], ri, self.alias[ri])


And the sampling code itself, following the parameters from your question here:

w = 10; mu = 0.0001  # Or whatever parameters you wish.
popcount = np.array([bin(n).count("1") for n in range(2**w)])
pmf = np.exp(popcount*np.log(mu) + (w - popcount)*np.log(1 - mu))
sampler = VoseAliasMethod(pmf)

l = 10; n = 10000  # Or however many you'd want of length < 64.
words_needed = int(np.ceil(l / w))

intlist = np.zeros(n, dtype=np.int64)
for _ in range(10000):
raw_samples = sampler.sample((n, words_needed))
if l % w != 0: raw_samples[:,-1] >>= words_needed*w - l
raw_samples <<= w*np.arange(words_needed)
result = np.bitwise_or.reduce(raw_samples, axis=1)
intlist ^= result


Compared to your implementation from your other question this runs in ~2.2 seconds as opposed to ~6.1 seconds for your numba implementation.

• Thanks! This looks really promising. I'll have a closer look later this day and then I'll try to understand what you have done. Nov 19, 2020 at 14:05

You could replace

        for position in range(l):
if random.random() < mu:
intList[number] = intList[number] ^ (1 << position)


with

        for bit in bits:
if random() < mu:
intList[number] ^= bit


after preparing bits = [1 << position for position in range(l)] before the show and importing the random function.

Don't know whether that helps when using numba, and you didn't provide benchmark code.

l is a poor variable name. It doesn't convey any information about what it is and it is easy to confuse with the number 1. I'll use nbits.

If nbits is not too large, it might make sense to precompute a table of possible bit flips and their probablities. For a probability of mu that a bit flips, the probability that it doesn't flip is (1 - mu). The probability that no bits are flipped is (1 - mu)**nbits; that only 1 bit flips is mu*(1 - mu)**(nbits - 1); that two are flipped is (mu**2)*(1 - mu)**(nbits - 2); and so on. For each number of flipped bits, each pattern is equally likely.

For the sample problem above, nbits is 3, and there are 8 possible bit flips: [0b000, 0b001, 0b010, 0b011, 0b100, 0b101, 0b110, 0b111]. There is one possibility of no bits flipped which has a probability of (1 - mu)**3. There are 3 possibilities with 1 bit flipped; each with a probablility of (mu*(1 - mu)**2). For 2 bits, there are also 3 possibilities, each with a probability of (mu**2)*(1 - mu). Lastly, the probability that all bits are flipped is mu**3. So we get:

p = [(1-mu)**3, (mu*(1-mu)**2), ((mu**2)*(1-mu)), mu**3]

flips   = [0b000, 0b001, 0b010, 0b011, 0b100, 0b101, 0b110, 0b111]
weights = [p[0],  p[1],  p[1],  p[2],  p[1],  p[2],  p[2],  p[3]]


Obviously, for larger nbits, you would have a function that calculates the probabilities and weights.

Then use random.choices() to pick the bit flips based on the weights:

for number in range(N):
intList[number] ^= random.choices(flips, weight=weights)[0]


According to the docs, it is a bit more efficient to use cumulative weights.

import itertools

cum_weights = list(itertools.accumulate(weights))


Note that flips is the same as range(8), so we can do:

for number in range(N):
intList[number] ^= random.choices(range(2**nbits), cum_weights=cum_weights)[0]


Lastly, if N isn't too big, we can use the k parameter to pick all the flips for the entire list in one call.

for index, bits in enumerate(random.choices(range(2**nbits), weights=weights, k=N)):
intList[index] ^= bits


It nbits is too large to make a table for all possible bit flips, make a smaller table. Then use bit-shifts and or-operations to get the required number of bits. For example, with a table for 8-bits, a 16-bit flip can be calculated like this:

hi, lo = random.choices(range(2**nbits), cum_weights=cum_weights, k=2)

flip = hi << 8 | lo

• "There are 3 possibilities with 1 bit flipped; each with a probablility of (mu*(1 - mu)**2)/3". This is incorrect. Each of them has a probablility of mu*(1 - mu)**2. Same with the 2-flipped-bit case.
– GZ0
Nov 15, 2020 at 10:55
• @GZ0, Thanks and fixed. Nov 15, 2020 at 17:11
• Some minor improvements for efficiency: (1) using a list comprehension intList = [v ^ flipped for v, flipped in zip(intList, choices(..., k=N))]; (2) in the computation of p, direct multiplication for small integer powers is more efficient than **, which needs to deal with arbitrary floating-point powers; (3) 1-mu does not need to be computed multiple times.
– GZ0
Nov 15, 2020 at 17:45
• Suggestion for computing the weights: weights = [1] and then for _ in range(nbits): weights = [w * p for p in (1-mu, mu) for w in weights]. Nov 15, 2020 at 19:01