What are the 5 most frequent numbers in Excel?

The 5 most frequent numbers in Excel are the top five numerical values that occur most frequently in a given set of data. This can be determined by using the “COUNTIF” function in Excel, which counts the number of times a specific value appears in a range of cells. The five most frequent numbers can be useful in identifying any patterns or trends within the data and can assist in making informed decisions and analysis.

Excel: Find the 5 Most Frequent Numbers


You can use the following formula to find the 5 most frequent numbers in a list in Excel:

=MODE(IF(ISERROR(MATCH($A$2:$A$24,C$1:C1,0)),$A$2:$A$24))

This particular formula will find the most frequently occurring value in the range A2:A24.

You can then click and drag this formula down to four more cells to find the top 5 most frequent numbers in the range A2:A24.

The following example shows how to use this syntax in practice.

Example: Find 5 Most Frequent Numbers in Excel

Suppose we have the following list of numbers in Excel:

Suppose we would like to find the 5 most frequent numbers in this list.

To do so, we can type the following formula into cell C2:

=MODE(IF(ISERROR(MATCH($A$2:$A$24,C$1:C1,0)),$A$2:$A$24))

We can then click and drag this formula to four more cells in column C:

Excel find 5 most frequent numbers

Column C now displays the five most frequently occurring numbers in column A.

To find the frequency of each number, we can then type the following formula into cell D2:

=COUNTIF($A$2:$A$24, C2)

We can then click and drag this formula down to each remaining cell in column D:

From the output we can see:

  • The number 4 occurs most frequently in the list. It occurs 6 times.
  • The number 15 occurs second most frequently in the list. It occurs 4 times.
  • The number 5 occurs third most frequently in the list. It occurs 3 times.

And so on.

Additional Resources

The following tutorials offer additional information on how to count frequencies in Excel:

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