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cmp() function - Python
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Python most_common() Function

Last Updated : 17 Apr, 2025
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most_common() function is a method provided by the Counter class in Python's collections module. It returns a list of the n most common elements and their counts from a collection, sorted by frequency. Example:

Python 
from collections import Counter  a = ['apple', 'banana', 'apple', 'orange', 'banana', 'apple']  # create a Counter object counter = Counter(a)  # elements according to the frequency in decreasing order res = counter.most_common() print(res)

Output
[('apple', 3), ('banana', 2), ('orange', 1)]

Syntax of most_common()

most_common(n)

Parameters:

  • n (optional): An integer specifying how many of the most common elements to retrieve. Defaults to returning all elements.

Returns: A list of tuples containing the n most common elements and their counts, sorted in descending order by frequency.

Examples of most_common()

Example 1: Finding the Most Common Words in a String

Python 
from collections import Counter  s = "Ram and Shyam are friends. Also, Ram and Ghanshyam are college friends. All of them Studies from GeeksforGeeks"  res = Counter(s.split()).most_common(3) print(res)

Output
[('Ram', 2), ('and', 2), ('are', 2)]

Explanation: The function splits the text into words and counts how many times each word appears. The three most common words are returned along with their counts.

Example 2: Counting Character Occurrences

Python 
from collections import Counter  a = "abracadabra"  # Get the most common character and its count res = Counter(string).most_common(1)  print(res)

Output
[('a', 5)]

Explanation: The function counts the occurrence of each character in the string and returns the most common character ('a') along with its frequency (5 times).

Example 3: Identifying Popular Items in a list

Python 
from collections import Counter  a = ['apple', 'banana', 'apple', 'orange', 'banana', 'apple']  res = Counter(items).most_common(1) print(res)

Output
[('apple', 3)]

Explanation: The function counts how many times each item appears in the list and returns the most common item ('apple') with its frequency (3 times).

Related Articles:

  • Python collections Counter
  • Python tutorial

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cmp() function - Python

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Article Tags :
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  • Python-Functions
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