Question

Here is the mySQL I got

id   terms    
1    a       
2    c       
3    a       
4    b       
5    b       
6    a       
7    a
8    b
9    b
10   b        

I want to get an alphabetized list sorted by count as follows

terms  count
a      4
b      5
c      1

What mySQL statement do I need for that?

Answer 1

I believe something like this will work:

SELECT terms, COUNT( id) AS count 
    FROM table 
GROUP BY terms 
ORDER BY terms DESC