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

Question

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].

Answer 1

This would be Haskell-style:

def wrand(vtlg):

    def helpf(lalt,lneu): 

        if not lalt==[]:
            return helpf(lalt[1::],[lalt[0]+lneu[0]]+lneu)
        else:
            lneu.reverse()
            return lneu[1:]        

    return helpf(vtlg,[0])

Answer 2

In [42]: a = [4, 6, 12]

In [43]: [sum(a[:i+1]) for i in xrange(len(a))]
Out[43]: [4, 10, 22]

This is slighlty faster than the generator method above by @Ashwini for small lists

In [48]: %timeit list(accumu([4,6,12]))
  100000 loops, best of 3: 2.63 us per loop

In [49]: %timeit [sum(a[:i+1]) for i in xrange(len(a))]
  100000 loops, best of 3: 2.46 us per loop

For larger lists, the generator is the way to go for sure. . .

In [50]: a = range(1000)

In [51]: %timeit [sum(a[:i+1]) for i in xrange(len(a))]
  100 loops, best of 3: 6.04 ms per loop

In [52]: %timeit list(accumu(a))
  10000 loops, best of 3: 162 us per loop

Answer 3

Without having to use Numpy, you can loop directly over the array and accumulate the sum along the way. For example:

a=range(10)
i=1
while((i>0) & (i<10)):
    a[i]=a[i-1]+a[i]
    i=i+1
print a

Results in:

[0, 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, 36, 45]