How to normalize a list of floats when one value has to stay the same?

Question

I have a list with these normalized values

list_a = [0.25, 0.25, 0.25, 0.25]

Now I want to change the value of one entry to another number, let's say 0.75. This number is fixed and shouldn't change anymore.

list_a_changed = [0.25, 0.25, 0.75, 0.25]

To still make sure the sum of all the values in the list add up to 1, the remaining values need to be 0.0833. So my list will have to be:

list_a_normalized = [0.083, 0.083, 0.75, 0.083]

This is easy enough to figure out if all values share the same percentage in the initial list. I can just do 1 - 0.75 = 0.25, and divide that 0.25 between remaining numbers since they all hold the same percentage of the total sum.

value_change = 0.75
remaining_value = 1 - value_change
divided_remaining_value = remaining_value / (len(list_a_changed) - 1)

list_a_normalized = [divided_remaining_value, divided_remaining_value, value_change, divided_remaining_value ]

But how would you do it if the original list was something like:

list_b = [0.25, 0.45, 0.20, 0.10]

And I change one value to 0.05

list_b_changed = [0.25, 0.45, 0.05, 0.10]

How would you calculate what the values of the other numbers will have to be so they each hold the appropriate portion of the remaining 0.95?

Answer 1

You may

• compute the remaining
• compute the total without the changed value, to get their relative proportion without the changed value
• multiply their value to the remaining to get it into account, and divide by the relative total to get them proportionnate to the total

def normalize(values, index_not_change):
    remaining = 1 - values[index_not_change]
    total_except_remaining = sum(values) - values[index_not_change]
    return [(value * remaining / total_except_remaining if idx != index_not_change else value)
            for idx, value in enumerate(values)]

print(normalize([0.25, 0.25, 0.75, 0.25], 2)) # [0.0833333333, 0.0833333333, 0.75, 0.0833333333]
print(normalize([0.25, 0.45, 0.05, 0.10], 2)) # [0.296875, 0.534375, 0.05, 0.11875000000000001]

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To understand the total_except_remaining purpose, without it it'd have been that

normalize([0.25, 0.25, 0.75, 0.25], 2) -> [0.0625, 0.0625, 0.75, 0.0625]

because you'd have compute a quarter of the remaining (0.25) but adding the fact that the relative sum was 0.75 and not 1, you update to their real proportion

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You can put the modification in the same method too

def normalize(values, position, new_value):
    values[position] = new_value
    remaining = 1 - new_value
    total_except_remaining = sum(values) - new_value
    return [(value * remaining / total_except_remaining if idx != position else value)
            for idx, value in enumerate(values)]

print(normalize([0.25, 0.25, 0.25, 0.25], 2, 0.75))