On: Seven Unix Commands Every Data Scientist Should Kn...

[fiddlerwoaroof]

I do something like:

    < foo.csv (read -r head; echo “$head”; shuf -n 50)

If you do this a lot, you could combine the read/echo into a single shell function.

[eesmith → fiddlerwoaroof]

Or write a Python program. But a quick test shows that CPython (using a pure Python reservoir sampling) is 1/4th the speed of shuf.