Mode

EXPLORE THIS TOPIC IN the MathWorld Classroom Mode

The mode of a set of observations is the most commonly occurring value. For example, for a data set (3, 7, 3, 9, 9, 3, 5, 1, 8, 5) (left histogram), the unique mode is 3. Similarly, for a data set (2, 4, 9, 6, 4, 6, 6, 2, 8, 2) (right histogram), there are two modes: 2 and 6. A distribution with a single mode is said to be unimodal. A distribution with more than one mode is said to be bimodal, trimodal, etc., or in general, multimodal. The mode of a set of data is implemented in the Wolfram Language as Commonest[data].

An interesting empirical relationship between the sample mean, statistical median, and mode which appears to hold for unimodal curves of moderate asymmetry is given by

 mean-mode approx 3(mean-median)

(Kenney and Keeping 1962, p. 53), which is the basis for the definition of the Pearson mode skewness.

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