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BinCounts sometimes outputs data as SparseArray, and sometimes Normal.
This does not depend on format of the input data.
All four cases are observed:
Normal -> Normal, Normal -> Sparse,
Sparse -> Normal, Sparse -> Sparse

How can I force the output format?

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1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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If you want to force a list output, you can change the Statistics`BinningDump`$binOpts to have the "SparseThreshold" option be zero:

BinCounts[RandomReal[{1, 10000}, 1000]]
(* SparseArray[ ... ] *)

Block[{Statistics`BinningDump`$binOpts = {"BinClosure" -> Left, 
       "SparseThreshold" -> 0.}},
 BinCounts[RandomReal[{1, 10000}, 1000]]]
(* { ... } *)

or simply apply Normal to your output.

Unfortunately, you cannot force the output to be a SparseArray, because the code will convert it to a list if the density of the result is larger than 0.8. But since SparseArray is idempotent, you can just apply it to the BinCounts:

BinCounts[RandomReal[{1, 100}, 1000]]
(* { ... } *)

SparseArray@BinCounts[RandomReal[{1, 100}, 1000]]
(* SparseArray[ ... ] *)
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  • $\begingroup$ Interesting, thank you! "Density" properties is important to me, can I get it right in the computation of BinCount process? $\endgroup$ Commented May 5 at 8:34
  • $\begingroup$ @lesobrod, not sure what you mean. You can calculate it from the output of BinCounts ... $\endgroup$ Commented May 5 at 8:58

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