Bincounting a list

Question

I'm a Mathematica novice here. I'm trying to execute the following code to add random 1's into a zero matrix, repeat this many times, and then bin/histogram the number of nearest neighbor 1s. Can anyone help me out with what I need to do to transform my list so that bincounts will play nicely?

ClearAll["Global`*"]; 
(*clear global variables*)
n = 10;  
(*set number of diluent elements*)
Do[
    b = SparseArray[{1, 1} -> 0, {100, 1},0]; 
    (*generate zero matrix*)
    a = RandomSample[Range[100],  n]; 
    (*select random sites to add elements *)
    Do[b[[a[[i]]]] = 1, {i, n}]; 
    (*insert elements*)
    e[i] = b; 
,
    (*generate iterated variable to record each run*) 
    {i,50}
]; 
(*loop i times*)
f = Table[e[i], {i,1,50}];
(*generate list from iterated variable*)
Do[g[j, i] = f[[j, i]] + f[[j, i + 1]], {j, 50}, {i, 99}];
(*sum nearest neighbors and loop over data set*)
h = Table[g[j, i], {i, 1, 99}, {j, 1, 50}] ; 
(*create an indexed list variable*)
BinCounts[h, {0, 3, 1}]

Where Bincounts returns the error: "BinCounts::vectmat: The first argument is expected to be a vector or matrix"

Answer 1

Here is a straightforward way to count the number of nearest neighbor ones in a matrix of zeros.

h = RandomChoice[{0.8, 0.2} -> {0, 1}, {10, 10}];
Total[Sign[DeleteSmallComponents[MorphologicalComponents[h], 1]], 2]

The h matrix is a 10 by 10 matrix of ones and zeros (change the 10s to change the size) where about 20% of the elements are ones and 80% are zeros (change the probabilities {0.8,0.2} to the desired percentages). The next line calculates how many ones there are in h after removing all those that are disconnected. This is equal to the number of ones in h that are touching each other. This version assumes that "nearest neighbor 1s" means any neighbor in the left, right, up, down, or diagonal direction. If a more restricted use of the word "neighbor" is desired, this is also possible using the option CornerNeighbors->False.

For example, when h looks like this

the number of components that are adjacent to any one is 12 (of the 15 ones, 3 are disconnected and so are removed by DeleteSmallCompoenents).