The mode is the central tendency measure that indicates the data point that occurs most frequently in a set of scores. It measures the frequency of occurrence of each unique value and denotes the score that has the highest frequency. The data points that the mode can describe can be numeric (e.g., height in cm or weight in pounds) or word-based (e.g., eye color, the city in which you live). The data points are organized somehow, and the frequency of each unique data point is determined. These are often summarized in tables. In this example, we define the mode based upon a survey of agreement with a statement. Each label is a unique response to the statement: agree, agree, disagree, neutral, neutral, agree, agree, agree, disagree.

Value                           Frequency

agree                            5

neutral                         2

disagree                       2

The most frequently occurring response is “agree”, which was chosen 5 times. Therefore the mode is “agree”.

It is important to make sure that you report the actual value that is the mode versus the frequency of occurrence for that value when reporting the mode. In the previous example, the mode is not 5 (the frequency) but is “agree”. If all the values in a data set occur at the same frequency, then that set has no mode, but a data set can have more than one mode if multiple values occur at the same highest frequency.

The mode is the least precise measure of central tendency because it measures the frequency of a value instead of actual values. However, it can be helpful when frequencies of values are the desired summarization; we couldn’t have elections without it!

Watch this video for a quick description of finding the mode using Excel.