What Is a Mode?

      The mode of a set, or list, is the value that appears most frequently.

Tip: Values in a list can be numbers, or things.

Tip: It's easy to remember what 'mode' means because mode and most both start with 'mo'.

Let's look at an example.

Joe is a baker. He asked 10 clients about their favorite cupcake flavor.

These are the answers he got:

chocolate, strawberry, chocolate, vanilla, lemon, vanilla, chocolate, lemon, peanut butter, chocolate

What is the mode, or most popular answer?

To figure this out, let's put the same answers together.

Which answer was mentioned most frequently?

We see that "peanut butter" was only mentioned once. It's the same for "strawberry".

Then "vanilla" and "lemon" were each mentioned twice.

But "chocolate" was mentioned 4 times.

This means that "chocolate" is the most popular answer, or mode. ✅

How to Find the Mode

Let's try to find the mode of this list of numbers.

14, 19, 12, 15, 18, 14, 15, 14, 13, 17, 12, 14

To make it easier, let's start by arranging the numbers from least to greatest.

12, 12, 13, 14, 14, 14, 14, 15, 15, 17, 18, 19

Tip: Sorting the set helps you see which values are repeated.

Which number occurs most frequently?

14 is listed 4 times.

14 is our most popular answer. 

14 is the mode. ✅

Excellent work. 👏

"Mo" in Mode

When you're asked to look for the mode, just remember this:

      Mode and Most both start with "mo".

Look for the value that appears most often. 

Example Number 2

Jack looks at the final scores of this week's winning teams.

These are the numbers that he got:

31, 22, 38, 28, 52, 34, 27, 45, 53, 20

What is the mode of this set?

First, we arrange the values from least to greatest.

20, 22, 27, 28, 31, 34, 38, 45, 52, 53

Then, we find the number that appears most often.

Which number is it?

None of the values are repeated.

This means that there is no mode for this set. 🤷‍♂️

      There are some sets that have no mode.

Example Number 3

Bella keeps track of the number of hours she sleeps at night. 

These are the number of hours she slept each day this week:

8, 9, 7, 5, 7, 8, 6

What is the mode of the number of hours Bella slept?

First, we arrange, or sort, the values from least to greatest.

5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9

How often does each number appear? 🤔

5, 6 and 9 appear one time.

7 and 8 appear two times.

This means that we have two modes for this set.

7 hours and 8 hours are our modes. ✅

      There can be more than 1 mode in a set.

Great job learning about mode. 👏

Now, complete the practice.