[python] what is the most efficient way of counting occurrences in pandas?

Just an addition to the previous answers. Let's not forget that when dealing with real data there might be null values, so it's useful to also include those in the counting by using the option dropna=False (default is True)

An example:

>>> df['Embarked'].value_counts(dropna=False)
S      644
C      168
Q       77
NaN      2