Count number of specific values in matrix
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Corey Bullard
on 2 May 2012
Commented: Andrew Frane
on 22 Oct 2024
I have a large matrix, m, and am trying to count the number of a specific value (i.e. How many indexes are of the value 4?)
I tried using
val = sum(m == 4);
but I end up with val being a matrix/vector of numbers. I assume these numbers are from each column and should be added together for the total, so I tried another
num = sum(val == 4);
but then I just end up with another vector/matrix.
How can I do it?
2 Comments
Walter Roberson
on 18 Oct 2023
num = sum(val == 0, 'all'); %r2018b or later
num = sum(val(:) == 0); %any version
num = nnz(~val); %any version
Accepted Answer
Walter Roberson
on 2 May 2012
sum(m(:) == 4)
3 Comments
MathWorks Support Team
on 2 Sep 2020
An alternative syntax available in R2018b or later is sum(m==4,'all'). But for this simple problem colonizing the input with m(:) is likely to be faster.
Andrew Frane
on 22 Oct 2024
Using the colon probably won't be faster to execute. If you use m(:) then Matlab has to do the additional step of creating a new array m(:) before doing the logical evaluation. In my tests, using 'all' is consistently faster than using the colon to vectorize the array.
More Answers (6)
Kye Taylor
on 2 May 2012
Try this:
numberOfNonZeros = nnz(m==4);
Using nnz is more efficient than converting logicals to numeric, which is required to apply sum()
2 Comments
Walter Roberson
on 22 Aug 2019
Edited: Walter Roberson
on 22 Aug 2019
In the test I just did, the timings of sum() vs nnz() could not consistently tell the two cases apart. nnz() might possibly have been slightly faster, but the range of timings showed so much overlap that no real conclusion could be reached. It would make sense that nnz() could be faster, but I can't prove it at the moment. sum() on a large enough array could be dispatched to LAPACK after all.
Andrew Frane
on 22 Oct 2024
I did a million iterations after defining m as a 1x1000000 vector, and nnz(m==4) beat sum(m==4) every time.
I did another million iterations after defining m as a 1000x1000 matrix, and nnz(m(:)==4) beat both sum(m(:)==4) and sum(m==4, 'all') every time.
So nnz does appear to be more efficient than sum.
Sean de Wolski
on 2 May 2012
This could be done easily with histc() and unique() to get the number of each value:
uv = unique(x);
n = histc(x,uv);
Or with unique() and accumarray():
[uv,~,idx] = unique(x);
n = accumarray(idx(:),1)
2 Comments
Royi Avital
on 10 Oct 2022
Pay attention that histcount() won't have the same result as histc() above for this case (Difference at the end).
Walter Roberson
on 11 Oct 2022
Royi is correct.
At the time the question was asked, histcounts did not exist.
The newer histcounts is recommended instead of histc()
In the where you pass in the bin edges, then histc() counts values that exactly match the upper limit separately, but histcounts counts them together with the previous bin.
dipanka tanu sarmah
on 11 Nov 2017
along with this if you want to count the number of NaN ,(if there any) use nnz(isnan(m))
0 Comments
vimal kumar chawda
on 18 May 2020
But if we want ot do for NaN and any numeric value in large matrix then ?
ans1=sum(a==5) so at this my value is numerical (which is not same all time) and other is NaN which is common. But i need to count only numerical value at particular value of x.,x2,x3...............x7000 which is on y axis.
-How many times y appear on the at particular value of x?
1 Comment
Walter Roberson
on 18 May 2020
nnz(isnan(a)) %count nan
For a count of each value, see https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/37196-count-number-of-specific-values-in-matrix#answer_46452
Patrick Benz
on 2 Apr 2021
How can I count the values in the second column of an array depending on the values in the column?
I've got an array that looks something like that:
400 0
396 0
392 1
400 0
396 1
400 1
and I want to know how often there is a "1" or a "0" next to a "400" or next to the other values.
I tried it with this way https://de.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/37196-count-number-of-specific-values-in-matrix#answer_46452
but this only gives me the total numbers of "1" and "0" and how often there is a 392 in the first column.
4 Comments
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