Skip to content
Courses

Mode (statistics)

The mode is the value that shows up most; the mean is the average, and the median is the middle value. In 3, 5, 5, 8, 9: mean 6, median 5, mode 5.

Select any words here to ask your Maestro about them.

The shoe store wants to sum up the day's sales in one number. With these sales, which of the three lands on a size nobody bought?

25 pairs sold in one day, by size. Example data.

All three at a glance: the mean (the average) shares the total out evenly; the median is the middle value once you sort them; the mode is the one that shows up most. In Excel: =AVERAGE, =MEDIAN and =MODE.SNGL.

Which to use: the mode when what matters is the most common, like which size to restock or which flavor sells best. It's the only one of the three that works on categories (colors, flavors, shirt sizes S, M, L). The median when there are outliers, as with salaries. The mean when there are no extremes and you care about the total.

There may be no mode, if nothing repeats, or two or more. A histogram shows you where the peaks are.

Practice it in When should you use the mean, and when the median?.

How it's used

All three on the same data

Data: 3, 5, 5, 8, 9

  1. Mean: 3 + 5 + 5 + 8 + 9 = 30; 30 ÷ 5 = 6=AVERAGE(B2:B6)
  2. Median: already in order, the middle one is 5=MEDIAN(B2:B6)
  3. marked: Mode: the one that shows up most is 5=MODE.SNGL(B2:B6)
The 9 pulls the mean up to 6; the median and the mode stay at 5, where most of the data sits.

When to look closer

When there are two modes

B2:B7 = 2, 2, 7, 7, 9, 4

  1. marked: =MODE.SNGL(B2:B7)
  2. 2

=MODE.SNGL returns 2, but 7 shows up twice too. How would you get both?

Ask your Maestro about Mode

It answers from the free course page closest to this word, the way it answers while you study.

Example

You: What does "Mode" mean, in plain words?

Your Maestro: I'll explain it with a case of yours: it sticks better than a definition. What number at work is better summed up by the most common value than the average?

Asking about: Answers from the page "Is the average salary what most people earn?"

Only this browser keeps what you ask here. How it works

Learn more

Related terms

  • Mean (average)

    To find the mean (the average), add up all the values and divide by how many there are: 15, 7, 8, 13 and 7 add up to 50, and 50 ÷ 5 = 10.

  • Median

    The median is the middle value when you sort the data from lowest to highest: half sit below it and half above. In Excel you get it with =MEDIAN(B2:B11).

  • Histogram

    A histogram shows how the values in a column of numbers are spread out: it cuts them into ranges of equal width and draws one bar per range, as tall as the number of values that fall in it.

  • Outlier

    An outlier is a value that sits far from the rest, like a $9,800 order among $300 ones. It can be a data-entry error or a real, important case: before you drop it, find out which.

The whole glossary