Simple histogram generation of integer data in C#

Question

As part of a test bench I\'m building, I\'m looking for a simple class to calculate a histogram of integer values (number of iterations taken for an algorithm to solve a pro

Answer 1

Based on BastardSaint's suggestion I came up with a neat and fairly generic wrapper:

public class Histogram : SortedDictionary
{
    public void IncrementCount(TVal binToIncrement)
    {
        if (ContainsKey(binToIncrement))
        {
            this[binToIncrement]++;
        }
        else
        {
            Add(binToIncrement, 1);
        }
    }
}

So now I can do:

const uint numOfInputDataPoints = 5;
Histogram hist = new Histogram();

// Fill the histogram with data
for (uint i = 0; i < numOfInputDataPoints; i++)
{
    // Grab a result from my algorithm
    uint numOfIterationsForSolution = MyAlorithm.Run();

    // Add the number to the histogram
    hist.IncrementCount( numOfIterationsForSolution );
}

// Report the results
foreach (KeyValuePair histEntry in hist.AsEnumerable())
{
    Console.WriteLine("{0} occurred {1} times", histEntry.Key, histEntry.Value);
}

Took me a while to work out how to make it generic (to begin with I just overrode the SortedDictionary constructor which meant you could only use it for uint keys).