title: Performance of python list count method
body: <p>In python, it's very easy to get the count of a particular item in a list:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;&gt;&gt; L = [1,1,1,2,3,4]
  &gt;&gt;&gt; print(L.count(1))
  3
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Is this method O(N)? Is it advisable to use this method, or are there better ways of quickly getting the count of an arbitrary number of elements in a list (i.e. a way to avoid O(mN), where m is the number of records for which a call to <code>count</code> is required).</p>