Modus

The modus of a set of values represents the value that occurs most often in that set.

What is a modus

If we have a set of values X = [2, 3, 1, 8, 8, 4, 8, 6, 2, 3], then the modus is the value that is most frequently represented in that set. The most frequent number in the file is 8, all other numbers are less frequent. If we added another number 2 to the file, then we would have two mods: the number 8 and the number 2, because both numbers would be in the file three times.

The advantage of a mod is that we can apply it to any set of elements - the elements don't even have to be sorted. So if we have a set of elements Y = [white, red, yellow, blue], the mod will be red because it's there the most times.

How to calculate the modus in Excel

In both Czech and English Excel, the function mode.sngl is used, which takes a selected cell area as a parameter. This function returns one modus, if you expect more, use the function mode.mult. You can see the following live sample from the Excel web interface [no longer working], which shows a set of students along with the number of correct answers from a math test.

In addition to the mode, the document also shows the mean and median. You can change the cell contents right here on the web and the mod will be recalculated immediately, so you can test what happens to the mod and other values when you change a few cells. Click on the Excel icon at the bottom right to download the source xlsx file.