In addition to finding the
mean and
median, there is a third method of computing an average or central tendancy. The mode is an alternative computation that takes the value in a set of numbers that occurs most often. Let's look at a set of numbers:
1, 4, 6, 5, 7, 4, 5, 5, 2
If we count how many times each number appears in the list we get:
1: appears 1 time
2: appears 1 time
4: appears 2 times
5: appears 3 times
6: appears 1 time
7: appears 1 time
As you can see the number 5 appears 3 times, which is more than any other number. In this particular set of values, 5 is the
Mode.
Uniquness
The mode of a set of numbers in not always unique. Let's take another set of numbers and find the mode:
5, 5, 6, 7, 7
In this example both 5 and 7 appear twice, therefore this set of numbers has two modes: 5 and 7
When to Use Mode
Using the mode is useful when you are dealing with a categorical set of data points. One example may be: You are voting on a class president and have 4 candidates. The data set would be the number of votes each candidate received. The mode would be the highest number of votes. The mode then indicates who wins the election.