Chapter 20: Measures of Center and Spread 279CHECK POINT
Find the median of each set of data.- A = {2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4}
- B = {34, 54, 78, 92, 101}
- C = {3, 4, 5, 4, 7, 8, 9, 2, 10, 1}
- D = {32, 34, 36, 38}
- E = {2, 2, 3, 4, 5}
Mode
Most people recognize the word mode, but not always from math. You’ve probably heard the
phrase “à la mode” used in describing a dessert. It really doesn’t mean “with ice cream.” It
actually means “according to the fashion.” It was fashionable to add ice cream to a dessert, and
doing so became quite common.DEFINITION
The mode of a set of data is the value that occurs most frequently.In statistics, the mode is the most fashionable value, the one that occurs most often. When you
look at a set of data and see a value that is repeated frequently, that value may be the mode of the
data set. If more than one value repeats, the one that repeats most often is the mode.
In the large data set below, you’ll find several values that occur twice: 9.8, 10.8, 14.7, and 18.6.
There is one value, 17.7, that occurs three times. The mode is the most common value, the one
that occurs most frequently, so in this data set, the mode is 17.7.6.9 8.7 9.7 10.7 11.5 13.3 14 14.7 17.3 18.6
7.8 8.9 9.8 10.812.113.414.114.917.618.6
8.1 9 9.8 10.8 12.4 13.6 14.4 15.4 17.7 19
8.2 9.4 10.3 10.9 13 13.7 14.6 15.9 17.7 19.9
8.5 9.6 10.6 11.4 13.3 13.8 14.7 16.8 17.7 22.7Not every data set will have a mode. Many are made up of values that are all different. And some
will have more than one value that repeats the same number of times, so you can say they have