Python - Obtain the most frequent word in a sentence, if there is a tie return the word that appears first in alphabetical order - python-2.7

Question

I have written the following code below. It works without errors, the problem that I am facing is that if there are 2 words in a sentence that have been repeated the same number of times, the code does not return the first word in alphabetical order. Can anyone please suggest any alternatives? This code is going to be evaluated in Python 2.7.
"""Quiz: Most Frequent Word"""
def most_frequent(s):
"""Return the most frequently occuring word in s."""
""" Step 1 - The following assumptions have been made:
- Space is the default delimiter
- There are no other punctuation marks that need removing
- Convert all letters into lower case"""
word_list_array = s.split()
"""Step 2 - sort the list alphabetically"""
word_sort = sorted(word_list_array, key=str.lower)
"""Step 3 - count the number of times word has been repeated in the word_sort array.
create another array containing the word and the frequency in which it is repeated"""
wordfreq = []
freq_wordsort = []
for w in word_sort:
wordfreq.append(word_sort.count(w))
freq_wordsort = zip(wordfreq, word_sort)
"""Step 4 - output the array having the maximum first index variable and output the word in that array"""
max_word = max(freq_wordsort)
word = max_word[-1]
result = word
return result
def test_run():
"""Test most_frequent() with some inputs."""
print most_frequent("london bridge is falling down falling down falling down london bridge is falling down my fair lady") # output: 'bridge'
print most_frequent("betty bought a bit of butter but the butter was bitter") # output: 'butter'
if __name__ == '__main__':
test_run()

Answer 1

Without messing too much around with your code, I find that a good solution can be achieved through the use of the index method.
After having found the word with the highest frequency (max_word), you simply call the index method on wordfreq providing max_word as input, which returns its position in the list; then you return the word associated to this index in word_sort.
Code example is below (I removed the zip function as it is not needed anymore, and added two simpler examples):
"""Quiz: Most Frequent Word"""
def most_frequent(s):
"""Return the most frequently occuring word in s."""
""" Step 1 - The following assumptions have been made:
- Space is the default delimiter
- There are no other punctuation marks that need removing
- Convert all letters into lower case"""
word_list_array = s.split()
"""Step 2 - sort the list alphabetically"""
word_sort = sorted(word_list_array, key=str.lower)
"""Step 3 - count the number of times word has been repeated in the word_sort array.
create another array containing the word and the frequency in which it is repeated"""
wordfreq = []
# freq_wordsort = []
for w in word_sort:
wordfreq.append(word_sort.count(w))
# freq_wordsort = zip(wordfreq, word_sort)
"""Step 4 - output the array having the maximum first index variable and output the word in that array"""
max_word = max(wordfreq)
word = word_sort[wordfreq.index(max_word)] # <--- solution!
result = word
return result
def test_run():
"""Test most_frequent() with some inputs."""
print(most_frequent("london bridge is falling down falling down falling down london bridge is falling down my fair lady")) # output: 'down'
print(most_frequent("betty bought a bit of butter but the butter was bitter")) # output: 'butter'
print(most_frequent("a a a a b b b b")) #output: 'a'
print(most_frequent("z z j j z j z j")) #output: 'j'
if __name__ == '__main__':
test_run()