Together with the mean and the median, the mode is one of the main measurements of the central tendency of a sample or a population. The mode is particularly important in social research because it is the only measure of central tendency that is relevant for any data set. That being said, it rarely receives a great deal of attention in statistics courses. The purpose of this entry is to identify the role of the mode in relation to the median and the mean for summarizing various types of data.

Definition

The mode is generally defined as the most frequent observation or element in the distribution. Unlike the mean and the median, there can be more than one mode. A sample or a population with one mode ...

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