I need to write a function to find the mode of a array. I\'m not good at coming up with algorithms however and I\'m hoping someone else knows how to do this.
I know
set most_found_element to the first element in the array
set most_found_element_count to zero
set current_element to the first element of the array
set current_element_count to zero
for each element e in the array
if e is the same as the current_element
increase current_element_count by one
else
if current_element_count is greater than most_found_element_count
set most_found_element to the current_element
set most_found_element_count to current_element_count
set current_element to e
set current_element_count to one
if current_element_count is greater than most_found_element_count
set most_found_element to the current_element
set most_found_element_count to current_element_count
print most_found_element and most_found_element_count
I thought the names would explain it, but here we go:
When we start, no element has been found the most times
so the "high-score" count is zero.
Also, the "current" value is the first, but we haven't looked at it yet
so we've seen it zero times so far
Then we go through each element one by one
if it's the same as "current" value,
then add this to the number of times we've seen the current value.
if we've reached the next value, we've counted all of the "current" value.
if there was more of the current value than the "high-score"
then the "high-score" is now the current value
and since we reached a new value
the new current value is the value we just reached
Now that we've seen all of the elements, we have to check the last one
if there was more of the current value than the "high-score"
then the "high-score" is now the current value
Now the "high-score" holds the one that was in the array the most times!
Also note: my original algorithm/code had a bug, we have to do an extra check of "current" after the loop ends, as it never finds "the one after the last".