1. A data processing system comprising: a low density parity check decoder comprising a variable node processor, a check node processor and a scaler circuit, wherein the low density parity check decoder is operable to scale soft information with a scaling factor in the scaler circuit while iteratively processing check node to variable node messages in the variable node processor and variable node to check node messages in the check node processor between a plurality of check nodes and variable nodes, wherein the scaling factor is derived from a distribution of possible values in an input to the low density parity check decoder, and wherein the scaling factor shifts probability values of each possible value of each symbol as it is decoded in the low density parity check decoder so that a median of a distribution of the possible values is shifted toward a middle one of the possible values and increases a variance of the distribution.