gistfile1.py

#Import a corpus reader
from sussex_nltk.corpus_readers import ReutersCorpusReader

rcr = ReutersCorpusReader() 

#Decide on the number of sentences that should be in your sample
sample_size = 1000

#See below, you have 2 different ways to get a random sample.
#  1. As a list of tokens, or
#  2. As a list of sentences
#Which one you want, depends on the statistic you want to calculate

#Sample 1000 sentences as a list of tokens
tokens = rcr.sample_words_by_sents(sample_size)

#Sample 1000 sentences as a list of sentences, where each sentence is a list of tokens
sents = rcr.sample_sents(sample_size)