Friday, October 5

Statistics Mode


Mode definition (math):
In statistics, a branch of mathematics, mode of a set of observations (also called data) is the particular observation that occurs most number of times. In other words, the observation with the maximum frequency is the mode of the data.

Finding mode:
The following steps are to be followed when calculating the mode of a set of observations of ungrouped data.
Step 1: Arrange the data in ascending order
Step 2: Look for the entry that occurs the most number of times.
Step 3: The number found in the step 2 above is your mode.

Mode Math examples:
To properly understand what is a mode in math or statistics, let  us try the following examples:

Example 1: The height of 10 students in centimeters is as follows, find the mode of the data.
145, 142, 143, 146, 144, 146, 143, 141, 140, 143
Solution:
Step 1: Arrange the data in ascending order. So now the numbers would look like this:
140, 141, 142, 143, 143, 143, 144, 145, 146, 146
Step 2: Look for the entry that occurs the most number of times. In the above data, the number 143 occurs thrice, whereas all the other numbers occur either once or twice.
Step 3: The number found in step 2 is the mode. Therefore for this problem, mode = 143 since it occurs most number of times.

Example 2: The lengths of screws manufactured by a firm in inches are as follows:
1.55, 1.50, 1.52, 1.53, 1.50, 1.52, 1.51, 1.54, 1.56
Find the mode of the data.
Solution:
Step 1: Arranging the data in ascending order we have:
1.50, 1.50, 1.51, 1.52, 1.52, 1.53, 1.54, 1.55, 1.56
Step 2: From the above arrangement we see that two numbers 1.50 and 1.52, both occur twice.
Step 3: Therefore this data has two modes: 1.50 and 1.52. Such a data is called bimodal.

Example 3: 
The ages of students in college algebra class is as follows:
25, 23, 24, 22, 23, 25, 22, 21, 27, 28, 20, 29
Find the modes.
Solution:
Step 1: Arrange the data in ascending order
20, 21, 22, 22, 23, 23, 24, 25, 25, 27, 28, 29
Step 2: There are three numbers, each occurring twice. They are 22, 23 and 25.
Step 3: These three numbers are therefore the modes. Such a data is called trimodal.
If there are more than three modes in a data set, it is called multimodal data.

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