Choosing random mode of list

Question

I have data that I would like to summarize by the mode of a list. When there is more than one mode, I would like to choose from the modes randomly. As I understand them, in a list with multiple modes the scipy and statistics mode functions return the first mode and raise an exception, respectively. I've rolled my own function (as follows), but I'm wondering if there's a better way.

import random

def get_mode(l):
    s = set(l)
    max_count = max([l.count(x) for x in s])
    modes = [x for x in s if l.count(x) == max_count]
    return random.choice(modes)

Answer 1

You can use Counter to do this:

from collections import Counter
from random import choice


def get_mode(l):
    c = Counter(l)
    max_count = max(c.values())
    return choice([k for k in c if c[k] == max_count])