Top N most frequent words in a data set in Numbers

Question

I have 3 columns of data in 10,000 rows and i would like to find out the top N most frequent words. I don't have a list of words before hand, rather i would like the algorithm/function to determine the top N most frequent words.
any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

naser,
This generally takes an extra columns
Here is an example that does what you wnat in a single table:
There are three sections:
1) Columns A and B:  column A contains the list of words, column B lists the "ID" of each new word
2) Columns D, E, and F: column D contains the list of unique words, E contains the number of occurances of each word, and F contains a fancier ID (to make words with the same count have slightly different counts)
3) Columns H, I, and J: column H contains the ranked IDs from highest to lowest, column I contains the corresponding word, and column J contains the count for that word
B2=IF(ISBLANK(A2),"",IF(IFERROR(MATCH(A2,A$1:A1,0), 0)>0, "",MAX($B$1:B1)+1))
D2=IF((ROW()−1)>MAX(B),"",LOOKUP(ROW()−1, B, A)
E2=IF(D2="","",COUNTIF(A,D2))
F2=IF(E2="","", VALUE(E2&"."&ROW()−1))
H2=IF(F2="", "", LARGE(F, ROW()−1))
I2=LOOKUP(H2,F,D)
J2=LOOKUP(H2,F,E)
select B2 thru J2, copy,
select Columns B thru J
hold the command key and click B1, C1, D1, E1, F1, G1, H1, I1, J1 (to unselect them)
paste
To limit the number of words, make the following change:
G1 contains the number of words you want
H2=IF(OR(F2="" ,(ROW()−1)>$G$1), "", LARGE(F, ROW()−1))
select H2, copy,
select column H, then unselect H1
paste