Find word with maximum number of occurrences

Question

What is the most optimal way (algorithm) to search for the word that has the maximum number of occurrences in a document?

Answer 1

1. Scan the document once, keeping a count of how many times you have seen every unique word (perhaps using a hashtable or a tree to do this).
2. While performing step 1, keep track of the word that has the highest count of all words seen so far.