Which statistic is defined as the most frequently occurring value in a data set?

• A. Mean
• B. Median
• C. Mode
• D. Range

Answer: (C)

Mode is the value that occurs most often in a data set. It highlights the most common observation, showing what people or items tend to cluster around. For example, in a set like 2, 5, 3, 5, 7, 5, 2, the number 5 appears more times than any other value, so it is the mode. If several values appear with the same highest frequency, the data are multimodal and have multiple modes. The other statistics measure different ideas: the mean is the average of all values, the median is the middle value when the data are ordered, and the range is the difference between the largest and smallest values. The concept described is exactly the mode—the most frequent value.