Mode

The mode of a set of values is the value that occurs most often in that set.

What is the mode

If we have a set of values X = [2, 3, 1, 8, 8, 4, 8, 6, 2, 3], the mode is the value that appears most often in this set. The number 8 appears most often; all the other numbers appear less often. If we added one more 2 to the set, we would have two modes, the number 8 and the number 2, because both numbers would appear in the set three times.

An advantage of the mode is that we can use it on any set of items – the items do not even have to be orderable. So if we have a set of items Y = [white, red, red, yellow, blue], the mode is the colour red, because it appears the most times.

How to find the mode in Excel

In Excel, use the MODE.SNGL function, which takes a range of cells as its argument. This function returns a single mode; if you expect several, use the MODE.MULT function. You can look at the following live demo from the web interface of Excel [no longer works], which shows a set of students together with the number of correct answers in a maths test.

As well as the mode, the document also contains the mean and the median. You can change the contents of the cells right here on the website and the mode is recalculated immediately, so you can try out what happens to the mode and the other values when you change a few cells. By clicking the Excel icon at the bottom right you can download the source xlsx file.