Python Pandas: Get dataframe.value_counts() result as list

Question

I have a DataFrame and I want to get both group names and corresponding group counts as a list or numpy array. However when I convert the output to matrix I only get group counts I dont get the names. Like in the example below:

  df = pd.DataFrame({'a':[0.5, 0.4, 5 , 0.4, 0.5, 0.6 ]})
  b = df['a'].value_counts()
  print(b)

output:

[0.4    2
0.5    2
0.6    1
5.0    1
Name: a, dtype: int64]

what I tried is print[b.as_matrix()]. Output:

[array([2, 2, 1, 1])]

In this case I do not have the information of corresponding group names which also I need. Thank you.

Answer 1

Convert it to a dict:

bd = dict(b)
print(bd)
# {0.40000000000000002: 2, 0.5: 2, 0.59999999999999998: 1, 5.0: 1}

Don't worry about the long decimals. They're just a result of floating point representation; you still get what you expect from the dict.

bd[0.4]
# 2