Efficient way to normalize a Scipy Sparse Matrix

This has been implemented in scikit-learn sklearn.preprocessing.normalize.

from sklearn.preprocessing import normalize
w_normalized = normalize(w, norm='l1', axis=1)

axis=1 should normalize by rows, axis=0 to normalize by column. Use the optional argument copy=False to modify the matrix in place.

While Aarons answer is correct, I implemented a solution when I wanted to normalize with respect to the maximum of the absolute values, which sklearn is not offering. My method uses the nonzero entries and finds them in the csr_matrix.data array to replace values there quickly.

def normalize_sparse(csr_matrix):
    nonzero_rows = csr_matrix.nonzero()[0]
    for idx in np.unique(nonzero_rows):
        data_idx = np.where(nonzero_rows==idx)[0]
        abs_max = np.max(np.abs(csr_matrix.data[data_idx]))
        if abs_max != 0:
            csr_matrix.data[data_idx] = 1./abs_max * csr_matrix.data[data_idx]

In contrast to sunan's solution, this method does not require any casting of the matrix into dense format (which could raise memory problems) and no matrix multiplications either. I tested the method on a sparse matrix of shape (35'000, 486'000) and it took ~ 18 seconds.

here is my solution.

• transpose A
• calculate sum of each col
• format diagonal matrix B with reciprocal of sum
• A*B equals normalization

• transpose C

  import scipy.sparse as sp
  import numpy as np
  import math
  
  minf = 0.0001
  
  A = sp.lil_matrix((5,5))
  b = np.arange(0,5)
  A.setdiag(b[:-1], k=1)
  A.setdiag(b)
  print A.todense()
  A = A.T
  print A.todense()
  
  sum_of_col = A.sum(0).tolist()
  print sum_of_col
  c = []
  for i in sum_of_col:
      for j in i:
          if math.fabs(j)<minf:
              c.append(0)
          else:
              c.append(1/j)
  
  print c
  
  B = sp.lil_matrix((5,5))
  B.setdiag(c)
  print B.todense()
  
  C = A*B
  print C.todense()
  C = C.T
  print C.todense()
  

I found this as an elegant way of doing it without using inbuilt functions.

import scipy.sparse as sp

def normalize(W):
    #Find the row scalars as a Matrix_(n,1)
    rowSumW = sp.csr_matrix(W.sum(axis=1))
    rowSumW.data = 1/rowSumW.data

    #Find the diagonal matrix to scale the rows
    rowSumW = rowSumW.transpose()
    scaling_matrix = sp.diags(rowSumW.toarray()[0])

    return scaling_matrix.dot(W)