selecting row counts

I want to select a row count but not a total row count for a table. For example I have a table called appointment. Every time a patient has an appointment there is a row in the table for that appointment. So if patient #1 has 3 appointments there are 3 rows for him, and if patient #2 has one appointment there is one row.
so

Code:

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select count(1) from appointment where patient=1;

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i get 3

Code:

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select count(1) from appointment where patient=2;

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i get one
I want to insert into another table appoint_num that has 2 fields patient and count. I want to insert the patient and the number of rows for each patient so I could run select * from appoint_num and get
patient num
1 3
2 1
I am not sure how to do this. Any help would be appreciated.

You are asking about and aggregate query:

Code:

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SELECT patient, COUNT(*)
  FROM appointment
 GROUP BY patient
ORDER BY 1;

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