I have a Python list with a number of entries, which I need to downsample using either:

• A maximum number of rows. For example, limiting a list of 1234 entries to 1000.
• A proportion of the original rows. For example, making the list 1/3 its original length.

(I need to be able to do both ways, but only one is used at a time).

I believe that for the maximum number of rows I can just calculate the proportion needed and pass that to the proportional downsizer:

def downsample_to_max(self, rows, max_rows):
        return downsample_to_proportion(rows, max_rows / float(len(rows)))

...so I really only need one downsampling function. Any hints, please?

EDIT The list contains objects, not numeric values so I do not need to interpolate. Dropping objects is fine.