A number that occurs most frequently is called Mode. It is a good measure when mean and median can’t be used. To get a more accurate representation of statistical data, Mode is used in certain circumstances.
For example, if you have a set of numbers then the number that occurs the most will be your mode:
3, 2, 4, 6, 2, 1, 8, 2
In the data set above, 2 will be the Mode as it is appearing thrice. It’s more of an observation than a calculation.
However, it is not always this easy. Data is represented in various forms and you need to be able to calculate mode even when data is not represented that easily.
How to calculate Mode
Example 1
Let’s take data of the number of people that wear clothes of different sizes.
| Size of clothes | 8 | 10 | 12 | 14 | 16 |
| No. of people who wear that size | 30 | 40 | 50 | 10 | 20 |
In this example, the mode will be 12 as it is the number with the highest frequency(50).
Example 2 : 1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 4, 8, 8, 8, 9
In the above data set, No. 2 and No. 8 both appear three times! This data set is then said to have a bi-modal value. So the Mode is 2 and 8.
Example 3: 4, 7, 11, 16, 20, 22, 25, 26, 33
In the data set above, all the values appear one time. The mode can then be calculated by grouping the data. Either in groups of 5’s or groups of 10’s as explained here.
If we group in 10’s then group 0-9 as two occurrences, group 10-19 appears twice, group 20-29 has four occurrences, then finally group 30-39 has one occurrence. Since the the group 20-29 appears the most times, we can simply pick the middle value of that group and that is our Mode. The Mode in Example 3 is 25.
