calculate modified precision

def MP(candidate, references, n):
    """
    calculate modified precision
    """
    counts = Counter(ngrams(candidate, n))
    if not counts:
        return 0

    max_counts = {}
    for reference in references:
        reference_counts = Counter(ngrams(reference, n))
        for ngram in counts:
            max_counts[ngram] = max(max_counts.get(ngram, 0), reference_counts[ngram])

    clipped_counts = dict((ngram, min(count, max_counts[ngram])) for ngram, count in counts.items())

    return sum(clipped_counts.values()) / sum(counts.values())