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RichardSchollar[_2_] RichardSchollar[_2_] is offline
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Default How to determine the top 5 occurrences from a list of numbers?

On 25 Sep, 05:52, Eric wrote:
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to determine the top 3 occurrences
from a list of numbers? For example,

1,1,1,1,1,2,2,2,3,3,3,3,3,3,4,4,5,5,5,5,5,6,6,6,6, 7,7,7,7,7 under column A
The occurrence of 1 is 5 times
The occurrence of 2 is 3 times
The occurrence of 3 is 6 times
The occurrence of 4 is 2 times
The occurrence of 5 is 5 times
The occurrence of 6 is 4 times
The occurrence of 7 is 5 times

It should return 3 in cell B1, 1 in cell B2, 5 in cell B3,
Since there are 3 numbers having 5 occurrences - 1,5,7, I only need to
select the rest of 2 numbers, then I prefer the smaller one 1, 5, and
ignoring 7.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to do it in excel?
Thanks ver much in advance for any suggestions
Eric


Hi Eric

MODE will give you the most frequent occurrence ie so in B1:

=MODE(A1:A50)

(adjust range to suit).

So get the next most frequent eg in B2 downwards you could use:

=MODE(IF(ISNA(MATCH($A$1:$A$50,$B$1:$B1,0)),$A$1:$ A$50))

confirmed with Ctrl+Shift+Enter and copied down as required.

Note that this is not a complete answer, as the order for ties (ie for
5 and 7) is determined by which appears first in the list.

Have you considered using a pivot table for this instead?

Richard