# Sorting common elements into bins
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/sorting-common-elements-into-bins/9564
**Category:** General Usage
**Created:** [March 7, 2018, 11:37am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/sorting-common-elements-into-bins/9564 "2018-03-07T11:37:47Z")
**Posts on this page:** 11
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@colintbowers](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/colintbowers)
#### Post date: [March 7, 2018, 11:37am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/sorting-common-elements-into-bins/9564/1 "2018-03-07T11:37:47Z")
Hi all,
I was just wondering if any tools already exist for sorting common elements of vectors or sets into bins? For example, for `x = [1,2,2,1,3,3,3,3,1]`, a routine that returns that there are 3 ones, 2 twos, and 4 threes.
Cheers,
Colin
---
### Author:  [@carstenbauer](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/carstenbauer)
#### Post date: [March 7, 2018, 11:45am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/sorting-common-elements-into-bins/9564/2 "2018-03-07T11:45:30Z")
Have a look at `fit` and `Histogram` in [StatsBase.jl](https://github.com/JuliaStats/StatsBase.jl):
[http://juliastats.github.io/StatsBase.jl/stable/empirical.html#Histograms-1](http://juliastats.github.io/StatsBase.jl/stable/empirical.html#Histograms-1)
Example:
```julia
julia> fit(Histogram, x, closed=:left, nbins=3).weights
3-element Array{Int64,1}:
3
2
4
```
---
### Author:  [@Nosferican](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Nosferican)
#### Post date: [March 7, 2018, 11:53am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/sorting-common-elements-into-bins/9564/3 "2018-03-07T11:53:00Z")
```julia
x = [1,2,2,1,3,3,3,3,1]
using StatsBase
countmap(x)
```
---
### Author:  [@carstenbauer](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/carstenbauer)
#### Post date: [March 7, 2018, 11:53am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/sorting-common-elements-into-bins/9564/4 "2018-03-07T11:53:37Z")
even better, learned something 🙂
---
### Author:  [@nalimilan](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/nalimilan)
#### Post date: [March 7, 2018, 5:08pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/sorting-common-elements-into-bins/9564/5 "2018-03-07T17:08:55Z")
You can also use the [FreqTables](https://github.com/nalimilan/FreqTables.jl) package, which will be more convenient if you need the result as an array. Finally in StatsBase there’s also the (poorly named) [`counts`](http://juliastats.github.io/StatsBase.jl/latest/counts.html#Counting-Functions-1) for small integer values.
---
### Author:  [@colintbowers](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/colintbowers)
#### Post date: [March 7, 2018, 11:32pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/sorting-common-elements-into-bins/9564/6 "2018-03-07T23:32:19Z")
Brilliant, that was exactly what I was looking for. Thanks.
Colin
---
### Author:  [@colintbowers](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/colintbowers)
#### Post date: [March 7, 2018, 11:32pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/sorting-common-elements-into-bins/9564/7 "2018-03-07T23:32:52Z")
Good to know thank you.
Cheers,
Colin
---
### Author:  [@xiaodai](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/xiaodai)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2018, 12:07am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/sorting-common-elements-into-bins/9564/8 "2018-03-08T00:07:50Z")
If you have lots of these and they are all smaller than 127 then casting them to UInt8 and `countmap` has a fast algorithm to count them.
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### Author:  [@colintbowers](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/colintbowers)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2018, 1:05am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/sorting-common-elements-into-bins/9564/9 "2018-03-08T01:05:49Z")
Interesting. In my current use case I can’t guarantee \< 127, but that is useful to know.
Cheers,
Colin
---
### Author:  [@xiaodai](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/xiaodai)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2018, 1:22am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/sorting-common-elements-into-bins/9564/10 "2018-03-08T01:22:37Z")
Actually there are fast algorithms for all integers types. Especially fast for U/Int8/16.
---
### Author:  [@colintbowers](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/colintbowers)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2018, 2:08am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/sorting-common-elements-into-bins/9564/11 "2018-03-08T02:08:36Z")
Well 16 bit integers is definitely enough. I’ll look into it.
Cheers and thanks,
Colin