How to find the mode of a large data set?
We know that mode is the value that appears most frequently in a data set.
For example, in the given data set: 1, 3, 2, 5, 1, 4, 6, the mode is 1 as it is the number that appears more than any of the other numbers.
When the data set has a small number of elements, it is easy to find the mode. But when the data is large, the data is tabulated and then the mode is found.
Let us understand how it is done with an example. Consider the below data set:
1, 3, 2, 5, 1, 4, 6, 2, 5, 2, 2, 2, 4, 1, 2, 3, 1, 1, 2, 3, 2, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1, 1, 4, 2, 1,5, 3, 3, 2, 3, 2, 4, 2, 1, 2
To tabulate this data, we use tally marks which represent how many times a given number appears in the set.
| Number | Tally Marks | Number of Matches |
| 1 | |||| |||| | 9 |
| 2 | |||| |||| |||| | 14 |
| 3 | |||| || | 7 |
| 4 | |||| | 5 |
| 5 | ||| | 3 |
| 6 | || | 2 |
| Total | 40 |
From the above table, we can find the mode as ‘2’ as it is repeated the most times compared to
the other numbers in the set.