Mode

The MODE of a data set is the most common value in the value set. In other words, it is the point that appears most often in the data set.

In order to find the mode, you must put the data points in numerical order. Whether that be from low to high, or high to low, either will do for finding the mode. You need to do this so that you can easily see what number or numbers appear most often in the data set.

If you don't put the numbers in order, that's also fine, but I would warn you to proceed with caution. You may miss or forget a number, and that can mess up your final evaluation of the data set.

If we put the data set in order from smallest to largest numbers, we will get: $${1,1,1,1,1,2,2,2,2,2,2,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,4,4,4,4,4,5,5,5,5,6}$$

This gives us an easier view to see that $3$ is the mode of our set, with an occurrence of $7$ times.

NOTE: Mode is just another statistical point we can have to further define a set of data. It is used along with median and mean. However, you can remember that the MOde of the data is the point that happens MOst.

Let's do another example. Sometimes, when there are a lot of numbers to count, I like to keep a tally board of each number. So, what is the mode of the following set? $${1,5,7,2,4,7,8,4,3,7,7,3,3,5,7,8,4,4,6,4,5,6,5,7,2}$$