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What is the Mode?
The mode is the most frequently occurring value in a given set of data. The mode of a data set will often be different from the mean and the median, and there can be more than one mode. This is particularly likely when every value in the data set has an equal chance of occurring. For example, if a die is rolled a hundred times, each number has an equal chance of being the mode, so there may be more than one.
Advantages
One advantage is that extreme scores, also known as outliers, do not have as large an impact on the mode. When a data set has outliers, the mean may not represent the bulk of the data in the group, so the mode is a useful alternative (as is the median). One advantage the mode has over both the mean and the median is that it can be used on non-numerical data sets. For example, there is a mode for the names in the phone book, but not a mean or median.
Disadvantages
The main disadvantage of the mode is that in some cases, the most frequently occurring value does not represent the sample well. In these cases the mean or median should be used. When there is more than one mode in a group of data, it can make interpretations and comparisons more difficult. Also, in some data sets, there is no value that occurs more than once ̵1; this means that every value in the group is the mode, and the mode cannot tell you anything new about the data.
Examples
Take this data set: ̶0;1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 189.̶1; Here, the mean is 20, but that doesn't represent the group well. The mode, however, is 1, and although that doesn't capture the outlier (189), it represents the main bulk of the group well. In this data set ̵1; ̶0;1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9̶1; ̵1; both the mean and the median are 5. These are good averages that reflect the group well. But because every figure appears once, the mode is no different from the data set itself, making it useless.