Get random sample from list while maintaining ordering of items?

Following code will generate a random sample of size 4:

import random

sample_size = 4
sorted_sample = [
    mylist[i] for i in sorted(random.sample(range(len(mylist)), sample_size))
]

(note: with Python 2, better use xrange instead of range)

Explanation

random.sample(range(len(mylist)), sample_size)

generates a random sample of the indices of the original list.

These indices then get sorted to preserve the ordering of elements in the original list.

Finally, the list comprehension pulls out the actual elements from the original list, given the sampled indices.