from collections import Counter

# Counting words in a sentence
sentence = "this is a test this is only a test"
words = sentence.split()
word_counts = Counter(words)
# Result: Counter({'this': 2, 'is': 2, 'a': 2, 'test': 2, 'only': 1})

print(word_counts.most_common(2))
# Result: [('this', 2), ('is', 2)] (order might vary for ties)

# Counting items in a list
items = ['apple', 'banana', 'apple', 'orange', 'banana', 'apple']
item_counts = Counter(items)
# Result: Counter({'apple': 3, 'banana': 2, 'orange': 1})