Normalizing a list of numbers in Python

Question

I need to normalize a list of values to fit in a probability distribution, i.e. between 0.0 and 1.0.

I understand how to normalize, but was curious if Pytho

Answer 1

There isn't any function in the standard library (to my knowledge) that will do it, but there are absolutely modules out there which have such functions. However, its easy enough that you can just write your own function:

def normalize(lst):
    s = sum(lst)
    return map(lambda x: float(x)/s, lst)

Sample output:

>>> normed = normalize(raw)
>>> normed
[0.25, 0.5, 0.25]