from collections import Counter mylist = ['red','green','blue','red','orange','red','green'] counts = Counter(mylist) for item, count in counts.items(): counts[item] /= 14 print(counts) # Counter({'red': 0.21428571428571427, 'green': 0.14285714285714285, # 'blue': 0.07142857142857142, 'orange': 0.07142857142857142})