Count number of clusters of non-zero values in Python?

Question

My data looks something like this:

a=[0,0,0,0,0,0,10,15,16,12,11,9,10,0,0,0,0,0,6,9,3,7,5,4,0,0,0,0,0,0,4,3,9,7,1]

Essentially, there's a bunch of zeroes before non-zero numbers and I am looking to count the number of groups of non-zero numbers separated by zeros. In the example data above, there are 3 groups of non-zero data so the code should return 3.

• Number of zeros between groups of non-zeros is variable

Any good ways to do this in python? (Also using Pandas and Numpy to help parse the data)

Answer 1

With a as the input array, we could have a vectorized solution -

m = a!=0
out = (m[1:] > m[:-1]).sum() + m[0]

Alternatively for performance, we might use np.count_nonzero which is very efficient to count bools as is the case here, like so -

out = np.count_nonzero(m[1:] > m[:-1]) + m[0] 

Basically, we get a mask of non-zeros and count rising edges. To account for the first element that could be non-zero too and would not have any rising edge, we need to check it and add to the total sum.

Also, please note that if input a is a list, we need to use m = np.asarray(a)!=0 instead.

Sample runs for three cases -

In [92]: a  # Case1 :Given sample
Out[92]: 
array([ 0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0, 10, 15, 16, 12, 11,  9, 10,  0,  0,  0,  0,
        0,  6,  9,  3,  7,  5,  4,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  4,  3,  9,  7,
        1])

In [93]: m = a!=0

In [94]: (m[1:] > m[:-1]).sum() + m[0]
Out[94]: 3

In [95]: a[0] = 7  # Case2 :Add a non-zero elem/group at the start

In [96]: m = a!=0

In [97]: (m[1:] > m[:-1]).sum() + m[0]
Out[97]: 4

In [99]: a[-2:] = [0,4] # Case3 :Add a non-zero group at the end

In [100]: m = a!=0

In [101]: (m[1:] > m[:-1]).sum() + m[0]
Out[101]: 5

Answer 2

You may achieve it via using itertools.groupby() with list comprehension expression as:

>>> from itertools import groupby

>>> len([is_true for is_true, _ in groupby(a, lambda x: x!=0) if is_true])
3

Answer 3

simple python solution, just count changes from 0 to non-zero, by keeping track of the previous value (rising edge detection):

a=[0,0,0,0,0,0,10,15,16,12,11,9,10,0,0,0,0,0,6,9,3,7,5,4,0,0,0,0,0,0,4,3,9,7,1]

previous = 0
count = 0
for c in a:
    if previous==0 and c!=0:
        count+=1
    previous = c

print(count)  # 3