What does mode refer to in a data set?

Mode refers to the value in a data set that occurs most frequently. It is a measure of central tendency, just like mean and median, but specifically identifies the number with the highest frequency of occurrence.

For example, in the data set {1, 2, 2, 3, 4}, the mode is 2 since it appears more times than any other number. Understanding the mode is useful in various statistical analyses, especially when dealing with categorical data where identifying the most common category is important.

In contrast to other measures, the mode can be particularly meaningful in situations where the most common item or value is of interest, irrespective of how the other data points are distributed.