[Python] Finding the most common elements in an iterable
>>> import collections >>> # Tally occurrences of words in a list >>> cnt = collections.Counter() >>> for word in ['red', 'blue', 'red', 'green', 'blue', 'blue']: ... cnt[word] += 1 >>> cnt Counter({'blue': 3, 'red': 2, 'green': 1}) >>> c = collections.Counter('helloworld') >>> c Counter({'l': 3, 'o': 2, 'e': 1, 'd': 1, 'h': 1, 'r': 1, 'w': 1}) >>> c.most_common(3) [('l', 3), ('o', 2), ('e', 1)]