How do you create a function that would take in a list of categories and count the number of elements in each category?

Question

I need to return a dictionary the with the categories as keys and the counts as values.

I'm very new to coding but this is what I've come up with so far:

def bin_counter(num_list):
    num_dict = {}
    for num in num_list:
        count.num_dict[num] = 'value'
           
    return num_dict

Does this answer your question? [How can I count the occurrences of a list item?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2600191/how-can-i-count-the-occurrences-of-a-list-item) — Trenton McKinney, Jun 24 '20 at 17:43

Bigicecream · Answer 1 · 2020-06-24T18:06:22.257

0

If I understand your question right, this is the solution: you can use:

collections.Counter(num_list)

Or in case you what to understand how to implement the function,the following function will do the job:

def bin_counter(num_list):
        num_dict = {}
        for num in num_list:
                try:
                        num_dict[num] += 1
                except KeyError:
                        num_dict[num] = 1
        return num_dict

And if you don't familiar with Exeptions, the following function will do the same just without usage of Exeptions:

def bin_counter(num_list):
        num_dict = {}
        for num in num_list:
                if num in num_dict:
                        num_dict[num] += 1
                else:
                        num_dict[num] = 1
        return num_dict

edited Jun 24 '20 at 18:06

answered Jun 24 '20 at 17:55

Bigicecream

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1
6

This was really helpful, thank you for explaining how I could make a function to do this! – Anna Jun 24 '20 at 18:16
I happy to help you, – Bigicecream Jun 24 '20 at 18:18
You can check this answer to let people know you don't need help anymore – Bigicecream Jun 24 '20 at 18:26

How do you create a function that would take in a list of categories and count the number of elements in each category?

1 Answers1