title: In Python, how do I convert all of the items in a list to floats?
body: <p>I have a script which reads a text file, pulls decimal numbers out of it as strings and places them into a list.</p>
  <p>So I have this list:</p>
  <pre><code>my_list = ['0.49', '0.54', '0.54', '0.55', '0.55', '0.54', '0.55', '0.55', '0.54']
  </code></pre>
  <p>How do I convert each of the values in the list from a string to a float?</p>
  <p>I have tried:</p>
  <pre><code>for item in my_list:
      float(item)
  </code></pre>
  <p>But this doesn't seem to work for me.</p>