Differing results from choice and choices in python random? [closed]

Question

I would have suspected the following code return comparable results:

import random

random.seed(765)
x = random.choices(range(34), k=100)

random.seed(765)
y = [random.choice(range(34)) for _ in range(100)]

But when we compare

>>> x[:5]
[1, 8, 9, 31, 29]
>>> y[:5]
[2, 30, 15, 26, 17]

clearly x is not equivalent to y.

I suspect that I a missing something obvious, but assumed the sequence set by the seed would have returned the same 100 values, regardless of choice vs choices with k = 100.

Answer 1

See the documentation:

For a given seed, the choices() function with equal weighting typically produces a different sequence than repeated calls to choice(). The algorithm used by choices() uses floating point arithmetic for internal consistency and speed. The algorithm used by choice() defaults to integer arithmetic with repeated selections to avoid small biases from round-off error.