[RESOLVED] Select most prevalent entry

[Kelrodin]

Is there a simple way of selecting the one value that appears most often in a single field?

I have a field named 'timeArrive'. I'd like this query to return only the string that is most common in 'timeArrive' (in this instance, '3 pm').
Any suggestions?

+-------------+
| timeArrive  |
+-------------+
| Before Noon | 
| Before Noon | 
| 3 pm        | 
| Before Noon | 
| Noon        | 
| 4 pm        | 
| 1 pm        | 
| Before Noon | 
| Noon        | 
| Noon        | 
| Noon        | 
| Before Noon | 
| 3 pm        | 
| 3 pm        | 
| 3 pm        | 
| 3 pm        | 
| 3 pm        | 
| 3 pm        | 
| 3 pm        | 
| 3 pm        | 
| 3 pm        | 
| 3 pm        | 
| 3 pm        | 
+-------------+

[laserlight]

One way would be to order by the count in descending order, and then just take the topmost row:

SELECT timeArrive
    FROM tablename
    GROUP BY timeArrive
    ORDER BY COUNT(timeArrive) DESC LIMIT 1;

However, if there is more than one value that has the maximum count, the others will be ignored. A possible solution to that might be to use a subquery, e.g.,

SELECT timeArrive
    FROM tablename
    GROUP BY timeArrive
    HAVING COUNT(timeArrive) >= ALL (SELECT COUNT(timeArrive) FROM tablename);

[Kelrodin]

Thank you! This is exactly what I was aiming for.