Counting consecutive positive values in Python/pandas array

>>> y = pandas.Series([0,0,1,1,1,0,0,1,0,1,1])

The following may seem a little magical, but actually uses some common idioms: since pandas doesn’t yet have nice native support for a contiguous groupby, you often find yourself needing something like this.

>>> y * (y.groupby((y != y.shift()).cumsum()).cumcount() + 1)
0     0
1     0
2     1
3     2
4     3
5     0
6     0
7     1
8     0
9     1
10    2
dtype: int64

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Some explanation: first, we compare y against a shifted version of itself to find when the contiguous groups begin:

>>> y != y.shift()
0      True
1     False
2      True
3     False
4     False
5      True
6     False
7      True
8      True
9      True
10    False
dtype: bool

Then (since False == 0 and True == 1) we can apply a cumulative sum to get a number for the groups:

>>> (y != y.shift()).cumsum()
0     1
1     1
2     2
3     2
4     2
5     3
6     3
7     4
8     5
9     6
10    6
dtype: int32

We can use groupby and cumcount to get us an integer counting up in each group:

>>> y.groupby((y != y.shift()).cumsum()).cumcount()
0     0
1     1
2     0
3     1
4     2
5     0
6     1
7     0
8     0
9     0
10    1
dtype: int64

Add one:

>>> y.groupby((y != y.shift()).cumsum()).cumcount() + 1
0     1
1     2
2     1
3     2
4     3
5     1
6     2
7     1
8     1
9     1
10    2
dtype: int64

And finally zero the values where we had zero to begin with:

>>> y * (y.groupby((y != y.shift()).cumsum()).cumcount() + 1)
0     0
1     0
2     1
3     2
4     3
5     0
6     0
7     1
8     0
9     1
10    2
dtype: int64