Get the element with the highest occurrence in an array

Question

I\'m looking for an elegant way of determining which element has the highest occurrence (mode) in a JavaScript array.

For example, in

[\'pear\', \'a         


        

Answer 1

Here’s the modern version using built-in maps (so it works on more than things that can be converted to unique strings):

'use strict';

const histogram = iterable => {
    const result = new Map();

    for (const x of iterable) {
        result.set(x, (result.get(x) || 0) + 1);
    }

    return result;
};

const mostCommon = iterable => {
    let maxCount = 0;
    let maxKey;

    for (const [key, count] of histogram(iterable)) {
        if (count > maxCount) {
            maxCount = count;
            maxKey = key;
        }
    }

    return maxKey;
};

console.log(mostCommon(['pear', 'apple', 'orange', 'apple']));