Answers and Explanations

In example 3, the mode is "4 passengers."

Example 4, is a little trickier. It has two modes, "O points and 7 points." When this is the case, the data set is called bimodal.

The mode (or modal score) of a set of data is a kind of center. For example, if you are looking for a suit and, in glancing around the shop, you notice a lot of price tags with $200 on them, you would probably say that suits in that store cost about $200. What you are giving is your impression of the typical price of a suit based upon seing lots of price tags for $200. This brings us to the concept of mode.

The most frequent or most common score in a set of scores is called the mode.

Make certain that you realize that it is the most common score and not the highest score that constitutes the mode.

The word, mode, comes from French, meaning "fashion." This makes sense, right? If a particular brand of jeans is in fashion, it is the brand most often bought.

Now let's explore this statistic some more with a little dice game.

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