numpy: most efficient frequency counts for unique values in an array

Question

How do I efficiently obtain the frequency count for each unique value in a NumPy array?

>>> x = np.array([1,1,1,2,2,2,5,25,1,1])
>>> freq_count(x)
[(1, 5), (2, 3), (5, 1), (25, 1)]

Answer 1

Use numpy.unique with return_counts=True (for NumPy 1.9+):

import numpy as np

x = np.array([1,1,1,2,2,2,5,25,1,1])
unique, counts = np.unique(x, return_counts=True)

>>> print(np.asarray((unique, counts)).T)
 [[ 1  5]
  [ 2  3]
  [ 5  1]
  [25  1]]

In comparison with scipy.stats.itemfreq:

In [4]: x = np.random.random_integers(0,100,1e6)

In [5]: %timeit unique, counts = np.unique(x, return_counts=True)
10 loops, best of 3: 31.5 ms per loop

In [6]: %timeit scipy.stats.itemfreq(x)
10 loops, best of 3: 170 ms per loop

Answer 2

Take a look at np.bincount:

http://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/reference/generated/numpy.bincount.html

import numpy as np
x = np.array([1,1,1,2,2,2,5,25,1,1])
y = np.bincount(x)
ii = np.nonzero(y)[0]

And then:

zip(ii,y[ii]) 
# [(1, 5), (2, 3), (5, 1), (25, 1)]

or:

np.vstack((ii,y[ii])).T
# array([[ 1,  5],
         [ 2,  3],
         [ 5,  1],
         [25,  1]])

or however you want to combine the counts and the unique values.