A1= Name
B1= Date

I am tracking attendance and one of the rules in the policy is consecutive days absent counts as 1 occurrence.

Column A Column B
Dave Jan. 2, 2016
Dave Jan. 3, 2016
Dave April 1, 2016
Dave April 5, 2016

I would like the count of occurrences, from this example it would be 3 since Jan. 2 and Jan. 3 are counted as 1.