Question

I’ve been trying to find the largest result in a list – using the confidence value.

Examples of the lists:

[[{u'categories': [u'health-beauty'], u'confidence': 0.3333333333333333},
 {u'categories': [u'activities-events'], u'confidence': 0.6666666666666666}]]

Would return the activities-events dictionary

[[{u'categories': [u'home-garden'], u'confidence': 0.3333333333333333},
 {u'categories': [u'None of These'], u'confidence': 0.3333333333333333},
 {u'categories': [u'toys-kids-baby'], u'confidence': 0.3333333333333333}]]

Would return all three as they are equal

[[{u'categories': [u'entertainment'], u'confidence': 1.0}]]

Would return entertainment

I tried to utilise python’s max function:

seq = [x['confidence'] for x in d[0]]
max(seq)

but that just returns the value

Answer 1

You can find the maximum confidence as in your own example, then use filter to create a list of all the maximum records:

max_conf = max(x['confidence'] for x in d[0])
filter(lambda x: x['confidence']==max_conf, d[0])

As noted in the comment below, filter could be replaced with list comprehension:

max_records = [x for x in d[0] if x['confidence'] == max_conf]