what is the mode of the following set of numbers 82,82,82,82,82,82?

Question

I know that the mode is the number that occurs the most, however, in our textbook it says that if each score in the distribution occurs with equal frequency the set has no mode.  Confused as to if the mode is 82 of this set or if it is no mode

Answer 1

the mode of the data is 82. What your textbook is talking about is if different numbers have the same frequency. If two numbers happen the most, it is called bimodal. If three or more happen, they just discard the mode as a measure of central tendency.

 

For example.

 

4,4,4,4,5,7,8,8,9,12,12,12,12,13 is a bimodal distribution having a mode of 4 and 12.

 

3,3,3,3,3,4,4,5,5,5,5,5,6,6,6,6,6,7,8,9,13,13,13,13,13,16,16,16,16,16 has too many modes to make it worthwhile to mention a mode....so they say that there is no mode. They may that there are 5 scores, 3,5,6,13 and 16, all of which happened 5 times, but they would not call any single one of these the mode.

 

Hope this helped.