How Can I Find the Most Frequent Value in an SQL Column?

Finding the Most Frequent Value in an SQL Column

When working with tabular data stored in SQL databases, it's often necessary to determine the most commonly occurring value within a specific column. This information can provide valuable insights into the distribution of data and help identify trends or patterns.

Query to Find the Most Frequent Value

To retrieve the most frequent value from a column, you can employ the following SQL query:

SELECT <column_name>, COUNT(<column_name>) AS `value_occurrence` 
FROM <my_table>
GROUP BY <column_name>
ORDER BY `value_occurrence` DESC
LIMIT 1;

Explanation of the Query

• SELECT: Selects the column whose most frequent value is to be found, along with a count of its occurrences.
• FROM: Specifies the target table, .
• GROUP BY: Groups the results by the specified column to count the occurrences for each unique value.
• ORDER BY: Orders the results in descending order of value_occurrence to identify the most frequent value.
• LIMIT 1: Restricts the results to the single row with the highest count.

Example

For the given table mentioned in the question:

Column

one

two

two

three

The query would return:

Column	value_occurrence
two	2

Customization

• Replacing Table and Column Names: Substitute and with the actual table and column names.
• Retrieving Multiple Frequent Values: To find the top N most frequent values, increase the limit in the LIMIT clause to N.

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