From the example data, you might be better off with a hash. It's much, much easier to manipulate (oops => 0, happy => 2, word => 4) than crazy array accessing. On top of that, it's clear you don't care about the original order of the array because you're sorting it. The only reason you might not be able to use an array is if you want to have duplicate entries (like [happy, 2], [happy, 2], or [oops, 0], [happy, 0], [happy, 2]. The second one doesn't have any true duplicates, but it's constructed in a way that you can't use either the left or the right element for the hash keys. But I doubt this is the case. Determine which value you will more commonly use for access (probably the number) and use it for hash keys.

-Ted