How to find the cumulative sum of numbers in a list?

user2259323 picture user2259323 · Apr 8, 2013 · Viewed 163.1k times · Source
time_interval = [4, 6, 12]

I want to sum up the numbers like [4, 4+6, 4+6+12] in order to get the list t = [4, 10, 22].

I tried the following:

t1 = time_interval[0]
t2 = time_interval[1] + t1
t3 = time_interval[2] + t2
print(t1, t2, t3)  # -> 4 10 22

Answer

askewchan picture askewchan · Apr 8, 2013

If you're doing much numerical work with arrays like this, I'd suggest numpy, which comes with a cumulative sum function cumsum:

import numpy as np

a = [4,6,12]

np.cumsum(a)
#array([4, 10, 22])

Numpy is often faster than pure python for this kind of thing, see in comparison to @Ashwini's accumu:

In [136]: timeit list(accumu(range(1000)))
10000 loops, best of 3: 161 us per loop

In [137]: timeit list(accumu(xrange(1000)))
10000 loops, best of 3: 147 us per loop

In [138]: timeit np.cumsum(np.arange(1000))
100000 loops, best of 3: 10.1 us per loop

But of course if it's the only place you'll use numpy, it might not be worth having a dependence on it.