finding top k largest keys in a dictionary python

Question

Lets say I have a dictionary:

{key1:value1........... keyn:valuen}

So lets say I want to write a function

def return_top_k(         


        

Answer 1

O(n log k):

import heapq

k_keys_sorted = heapq.nlargest(k, dictionary)

You could use key keyword parameter to specify what should be used as a sorting key e.g.:

k_keys_sorted_by_values = heapq.nlargest(k, dictionary, key=dictionary.get)

Answer 2

portfolio = [
   {'name': 'IBM', 'shares': 100, 'price': 91.1},
   {'name': 'AAPL', 'shares': 50, 'price': 543.22},
   {'name': 'FB', 'shares': 200, 'price': 21.09},
   {'name': 'HPQ', 'shares': 35, 'price': 31.75},
   {'name': 'YHOO', 'shares': 45, 'price': 16.35},
   {'name': 'ACME', 'shares': 75, 'price': 115.65}
]

cheap = heapq.nsmallest(3, portfolio, key=lambda s: s['price'])
expensive = heapq.nlargest(3, portfolio, key=lambda s: s['price'])

Answer 3

For top-3 step by step:

>>> from operator import itemgetter
>>> dct = {"a": 1, "b": 2, "c": 3, "d": 4, "e": 5}
>>> sorted(dct.items(), key=itemgetter(1), reverse=True)
[('e', 5), ('d', 4), ('c', 3), ('b', 2), ('a', 1)]
>>> map(itemgetter(0), sorted(dct.items(), key=itemgetter(1), reverse=True))
['e', 'd', 'c', 'b', 'a']
>>> map(itemgetter(0), sorted(dct.items(), key=itemgetter(1), reverse=True))[:3]
['e', 'd', 'c']

Or using heapq module

>>> import heapq
>>> heapq.nlargest(3, dct.items(), key=itemgetter(1))
[('e', 5), ('d', 4), ('c', 3)]
>>> map(itemgetter(0), _)
['e', 'd', 'c']

Answer 4

return sorted(dictionary, key=dictionary.get, reverse=True)[:10]

Should be at worst O(NlogN) (although heapq proposed by others is probably better) ...

It might also make sense to use a Counter instead of a regular dictionary. In that case, the most_common method will do (approximately) what you want (dictionary.most_common(10)), but only if it makes sense to use a Counter in your API.

Answer 5

In code

dct = {"a": 1, "b": 2, "c": 3, "d": 4, "e": 5}
k = 3
print sorted(dct.keys(), reverse=True)[:k]

If you also need values:

print sorted(dct.items(), reverse=True)[:k]

Or if you would want to use OrderedDict:

from collections import OrderedDict
d = OrderedDict(sorted(dct.items(), reverse=True))
print d.keys()[:k]