Measures of Central Tendency | Mode

Mode

The most frequently occurring value (or class) in data is called the mode.

• The mode is the most commonly appearing value in the data distribution.
• We can use mode as the measure of central tendency for both categorical and numerical variables.
• The data distribution can have more than one mode.

Example

The age in months of 15 Tiny Tots from a preschool is given in the table below. Compute Mode.

Let’s create a frequency distribution table for the above data.

Value	24	36	37	38	39	40	41
Frequency	1	3	4	2	2	2	1

• The value 37 appeared the max number of times (four times) in the data distribution.
• Hence, Mode = 37

Types of Mode

• Unimodal: There is only one mode in the data distribution. For E.g., x = 1,2,2,3 (mode = 2).
• Bimodal: There are two modes in the data distribution. For E.g., x = 1,2,2,3,3,4 (mode = [2,3] ).
• Trimodal: There are three modes in the data distribution. For E.g., x = 1,2,2,3,3,4,4,5 (mode = [2,3,4] ).
• Multimodal: There are more than three modes in the data distribution. For E.g., x = 1,2,2,3,3,4,4,5,5,6 (mode = [2,3,4,5] ).

Application of Mode

A fashion retailer selling items like shoes, shirts, etc will have to manage inventory based on most selling sizes. The mode is the best statistic to be used in such instances; mean & median may not be of much use.

The mode is the only measure of central tendency that can be used for Categorical Variables.

Practice Exercise 1

Find the mode for the below histogram

Practice Exercise 2

A small startup has 10 employees including the founder members. The monthly salaries of all the employees are given in the table below. Find the mode salary.

Emp. No.	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Monthly Salary (k)	90	80	18	18	17	16	16	16	15	14

Next Blog

In our next blog, we will discuss the answers for practice exercises given in Mean, Median, and Mode blogs. Later, we will discuss the Measures of Dispersion.

<<< previous blog         |         next blog >>>
<<< statistics blog series home >>>