I want to get the two smallest numbers from a dictionary

Question

Basically i have a dictionary with 6 values and i want to get the two smallest values out to eliminate them. How can i get the two smallest values from the dictionary.

I have already tried using: min(eleminate.items(), key=lambda x: x[1]) but this only works once for me. The second value does not come.

eleminate = {"Couple1":Couple1,"Couple2":Couple2,"Couple3":Couple3,"Couple4":Couple4,"Couple5":Couple5,"Couple6":Couple6}
eleminate.items()
FSmallest = min(eleminate.items(), key=lambda x: x[1]) 
SSmallest = min(eleminate.items(), key=lambda y: y[0]) 
print(eleminate)
gone = print(FSmallest," and ",SSmallest," have been eleminated!")

My code prints out the same value twice. For example:

That was the end of Round one!
{'Couple1': 3, 'Couple2': 6, 'Couple3': 9, 'Couple4': 12, 'Couple5': 15, 'Couple6': 18}

('Couple1', 3)  and  ('Couple1', 3)  have been eleminated!

Answer 1

There are a few ways to do this.

I would use sorted :

from operator import itemgetter

print(sorted(data.items(), key=itemgetter(1))[:2])

Output:

[('Couple1', 3), ('Couple2', 6)]

To get the dictionary without those two items:

dict(sorted(data.items(), key=itemgetter(1))[2:]))

Output:

{'Couple3': 9, 'Couple4': 12, 'Couple5': 15, 'Couple6': 18}

Answer 2

Start by sorting your dictionary by value using sorted on values

import operator
eleminate = {'Couple1': 3, 'Couple2': 6, 'Couple3': 9, 'Couple4': 12, 'Couple5': 15, 'Couple6': 18}

sorted_eleminate = sorted(eleminate.items(), key=operator.itemgetter(1))
#[('Couple1', 3), ('Couple2', 6), ('Couple3', 9), ('Couple4', 12), ('Couple5', 15), ('Couple6', 18)]

Then delete the first two elements in the sorted list

for key, value in sorted_eleminate[0:2]:
    del eleminate[key]
print(eleminate)
#{'Couple3': 9, 'Couple4': 12, 'Couple5': 15, 'Couple6': 18}

Or just get the dictionary without the first two elements

print(dict(sorted_eleminate[2:]))
#{'Couple3': 9, 'Couple4': 12, 'Couple5': 15, 'Couple6': 18}