295
If the list is sorted, you can use groupby from the itertools standard library (if it isn't, you can just sort it first, although this takes O(n lg n) time):
from itertools import groupby
a = [5, 1, 2, 2, 4, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 1, 5, 2]
[len(list(group)) for key, group in groupby(sorted(a))]
Output:
[4, 4, 2, 1, 2]
Python 2.7+ introduces Dictionary Comprehension. Building the dictionary from the list will get you the count as well as get rid of duplicates.
>>> a = [1,1,1,1,2,2,2,2,3,3,4,5,5]
>>> d = {x:a.count(x) for x in a}
>>> d
{1: 4, 2: 4, 3: 2, 4: 1, 5: 2}
>>> a, b = d.keys(), d.values()
>>> a
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
>>> b
[4, 4, 2, 1, 2]