Using heapq.nlargest with a Percentage - Python

Yes. Behind the curtains a heap is actually a list with certain properties (it uses what is called an implicit data structure).

So we can first take len(y) to obtain the number of elements. By dividing by 10, we get the 10% number of elements. So we can use:

heapq.nlargest(len(y)//10, y)

Or in case you want to use a percentage as parameter:

p = 17  # top 17 procent

heapq.nlargest(len(y)*p//100, y)

You can also use a fraction (for instance the top 0.14):

from math import round

p = 0.14  # top 14 procent

heapq.nlargest(round(len(y)*p), y)