Rejection Sampling with Perl 6

Perl 6 provides a way to create lazy lists using the gather/take keywords. What I wanted to do was create an infinite list of samples from a known distribution of values. A simple way to sample from a known distribution is to do Rejection Sampling and doing this in Perl 6 is super easy.

[code lang=”perl”]

sub sample(%distribution) {
gather {
loop {
my $v = %distribution.pick;
take $v.key if rand <= $v.value;
}
}
}
[/code]

This function creates a Seq and you grab values from it in a lazy way. Here is a simple example assigning 100 samples from a distribution
to an array.

[code lang=”perl”]

my %distribution = a=> 0.3, b=> 0.4, c=>0.1, d=>0.2;
my @samples = sample(%distribution)[0..^100];
[/code]

Perl 6 is super fun. It has taken all the cool features from all the other languages and ignored the bad stuff. In this case, lazy lists from Haskell.

Read Seqs, Drugs, and Rock’n Roll to learn more about Sequences in Perl 6.