In Python, how do I convert all of the items in a list to floats?

This would be an other method (without using any loop!):

import numpy as np
list(np.float_(list_name))

you can even do this by numpy

import numpy as np
np.array(your_list,dtype=float)

this return np array of your list as float

you also can set 'dtype' as int

You can use the map() function to convert the list directly to floats:

float_list = map(float, list)

you can use numpy to avoid looping:

import numpy as np
list(np.array(my_list).astype(float)

This is how I would do it.

my_list = ['0.49', '0.54', '0.54', '0.54', '0.54', '0.54', '0.55', '0.54', 
    '0.54', '0.54', '0.55', '0.55', '0.55', '0.54', '0.55', '0.55', '0.54', 
    '0.55', '0.55', '0.54']
print type(my_list[0]) # prints <type 'str'>
my_list = [float(i) for i in my_list]
print type(my_list[0]) # prints <type 'float'>

import numpy as np
my_list = ['0.49', '0.54', '0.54', '0.54', '0.54', '0.54', '0.55', '0.54', '0.54', '0.54', '0.55', '0.55', '0.55', '0.54', '0.55', '0.55', '0.54', 
'0.55', '0.55', '0.54']
print(type(my_list), type(my_list[0]))   
# <class 'list'> <class 'str'>

which displays the type as a list of strings. You can convert this list to an array of floats simultaneously using numpy:

    my_list = np.array(my_list).astype(np.float)

    print(type(my_list), type(my_list[0]))  
    # <class 'numpy.ndarray'> <class 'numpy.float64'>

I have solve this problem in my program using:

number_input = float("{:.1f}".format(float(input())))
list.append(number_input)

I had to extract numbers first from a list of float strings:

   df4['sscore'] = df4['simscore'].str.findall('\d+\.\d+')

then each convert to a float:

   ad=[]
   for z in range(len(df4)):
      ad.append([float(i) for i in df4['sscore'][z]])

in the end assign all floats to a dataframe as float64:

   df4['fscore'] = np.array(ad,dtype=float)

for i in range(len(list)): list[i]=float(list[i])