Find the Most Frequent Element in an Array in PHP

Given an array, i.e. $arr, the task is to find the most frequent element in an array. There are multiple ways to solve this problem in PHP we will be going to discuss them. These problems can be used during data analysis, Web Analytics, or highly used in fraud detection.

Example:

Input: $array = [1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4];
Output: 3

These are the following ways to find the Most Frequent Element in an Array:

Using PHP array_count_values() method

The array_count_values() function allows to tally occurrences of each array element, returning an associative array with elements as keys and their frequencies as values. Using max() identifies the highest frequency, and array_search() retrieves the element associated with this peak frequency."

Example: To demonstrate finding the most frequent element in an arrya using arrya_count_values() method in PHP.

<?php
function findMostFrequent($arr)
{
    $freqArray = array_count_values($arr);
    $maxFreq = max($freqArray);
    $mostFrequent = array_search($maxFreq, $freqArray);
    return $mostFrequent;
}

$array = [1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4];
$mostFrequent = findMostFrequent($array);
echo "Most frequent element: " . $mostFrequent;
?>

Most frequent element: 4

Using a forEach() loop and a frequency array

We'll initialize an empty associative array "count" to track element counts. As we iterate through each element in the input array, we ensure each element exists in "count" , initializing its count to 0 if necessary. We then increment the count for each element. If the current count surpasses the maximum count observed thus far, we update "maxCount" and "mostFrequent".

Example: To demonstrate finding the most frequent element in an arrya using forEach() loopin PHP.

<?php
function findMostFrequent($arr)
{
    $freqArray = array();
    foreach ($arr as $element) {
        if (isset($freqArray[$element])) {
            $freqArray[$element]++;
        } else {
            $freqArray[$element] = 1;
        }
    }
    $maxFreq = max($freqArray);
    $mostFrequent = array_search($maxFreq, $freqArray);
    return $mostFrequent;
}

$array = [1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4];
$mostFrequent = findMostFrequent($array);
echo "Most frequent element: " . $mostFrequent;
?>

Most frequent element: 4

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• PHP