Counting problem

[Starefossen]

If I have a table names like this:
name
Hans
Peter
James
Hans
Hans
Peter
James
Hans
James
Hans

How can I make it display it like this:
Name - Times
Hans - 5
James - 3
Peter - 2

And have it to say this:
"n1 persons" is listed more than "n2" times

e.g.
"1 person is listed more than 4 times"

"2 person are listed more than 2 times"

"3 persons are listed more than 1 time"

I would be really happy if someone had a sulution to my little probleme... 🙂

[laserlight]

As in a table in a relational database? It would be along the lines of:

SELECT name, COUNT(*) FROM names GROUP BY name;

[Starefossen]

Thanks, that solved the display of the list, but I'm not sure how to display it like this:

"n1 persons" is listed more than "n2" times

where n1 is the number of persons listed more than n2 times...

[laserlight]

Well, you can start of with:

SELECT name, COUNT(*) AS name_count FROM names GROUP BY name ORDER BY name_count DESC;

So, this would return name/counts in the order of your example data:
Hans - 5
James - 3
Peter - 2

Now, the basic idea is to loop through this array (from 1 less than the largest number to 1), keeping a count of the number of people who have a count above the current number. If there are no names associated with the current number, skip it. When designing this algorithm, you might want to consider repeated name counts.