Question

In Python, I have a list:

L = [1, 2, 45, 55, 5, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5456, 56, 6, 7, 67]  

I want to identify the item that occurred the highest number of times. I am able to solve it but I need the fastest way to do so. I know there is a nice Pythonic answer to this.

Answer 1

Here is a defaultdict solution that will work with Python versions 2.5 and above:

from collections import defaultdict

L = [1,2,45,55,5,4,4,4,4,4,4,5456,56,6,7,67]
d = defaultdict(int)
for i in L:
    d[i] += 1
result = max(d.iteritems(), key=lambda x: x[1])
print result
# (4, 6)
# The number 4 occurs 6 times

Note if L = [1, 2, 45, 55, 5, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5456, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 56, 6, 7, 67]
then there are six 4s and six 7s. However, the result will be (4, 6) i.e. six 4s.