Example 1: collections.counter in python
>>> from collections import Counter
>>>
>>> myList = [1,1,2,3,4,5,3,2,3,4,2,1,2,3]
>>> print Counter(myList)
Counter({2: 4, 3: 4, 1: 3, 4: 2, 5: 1})
>>>
>>> print Counter(myList).items()
[(1, 3), (2, 4), (3, 4), (4, 2), (5, 1)]
>>>
>>> print Counter(myList).keys()
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
>>>
>>> print Counter(myList).values()
[3, 4, 4, 2, 1]
Example 2: python counter
>>> Counter('abracadabra').most_common(3)
[('a', 5), ('r', 2), ('b', 2)]
Example 3: python counter
>>> c = Counter(a=4, b=2, c=0, d=-2)
>>> d = Counter(a=1, b=2, c=3, d=4)
>>> c.subtract(d)
>>> c
Counter({'a': 3, 'b': 0, 'c': -3, 'd': -6})