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LEARNING
HANDOUTS
CBM GE 4
(Mathematics in the Modern World)

PREPARED BY:

JERRY A. MABAG, MBA

Instructor
PRE-FINAL COVERAGE

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CBM GE 4
(MATHEMATICS IN THE MODERN WORLD)
 CONTENTS

Week 11 – The Median

Week 12– The Mode

Week 13 – Other Measures of Position

Week 14 – PRE-FINAL EXAMINATION

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CBM GE 4
(MATHEMATICS IN THE MODERN WORLD)
 Week 12:

THE MODE

Occasionally, we focus our attention to the score which occurs the most number of times.
In describing a college freshman class for example, we might say “The average age of the
students is 18” simply because we find that the majority of the students in that class are 18 years
of age. We deliberately ignore the possibility that a few are relatively younger or older than that.
The value which we observe to have the highest frequency and which, in certain cases, we use as
a measure of central tendency, is known as the mode. Preference for this measure over the mean
and median is usually influenced by the desire to obtain a quick estimate of the average.

For ungrouped data, the mode is obtained by mere inspection. While it is possible for a
set of values to have no mode because each score appears only once, it is also possible for other
sets of values to have more than one mode. Those with two modes are described as bimodal,
while those with many modes are called multimodal. Like the median, the mode is not
influenced by extreme scores; but unlike the median, it does not indicate anything about the other
values in the data like how many are greater and how many are less than the most frequently
occurring value. Hence, the mode is rarely used.

Example 1

Find the mode of the following values:

4, 4, 8, 8, 8, 9, 12, 12, 15, 19, 20.

Solution.
The value 8 occurs more frequently than any other value, or
appears several times; hence, mo = 8

The Mode of Grouped Data

Because of the limitations of the mode, many analysts find the class mark of the modal
class, the interval with the highest frequency, a satisfactory estimate of the most frequently
occurring value. We shall, however, present two formulas for calculating a refined more – one
making use of the values of the mean and median, and the other involving the frequencies
immediately surrounding the modal class. These two formulas are not equivalent; therefore,
they do not yield the same result.

Formula 1. mo = 3mdn – 2mean

Formula 2. Mo = XLB + d1
( d1 + d2) i,

Where:
XLB = lower boundary of the modal class

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CBM GE 4
(MATHEMATICS IN THE MODERN WORLD)
 d1 = difference between the frequency in the modal class
and the frequency in the preceding class interval.

d2 = difference between the frequency in the modal class

and the frequenc6y in the succeeding class interval.
i = interval size

Let us consider the following frequency distribution in table 1.

TABLE 2
FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTION OF
MATH TEST SCORES
________________________________________________________
X f
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
20 – 24 2
25 – 29 6
30 – 34 9
35 – 39 10 > 2 d1
modal class > 40 – 44 12
45 – 49 7 > 5 d2
50 – 54 4
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
i=5 n = 50
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. The mean of the distribution in previous table is 38.1 and the median
is 38.5 in table 1.

mo = 3 mdn - 2 mean

= 3 (38.5) - 2 (38.1)

= 115.5 - 76.2

= 39.3

2. Modal class is 40 – 44.

d1 = 12 – 10 = 2
d2 = 12 - 7 = 5

mo = XLB + ( d1 )
(d1 + d2) i,
= 39.5 + ( 2 ) 5
2 + 5

= 39.5 + 1.43

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CBM GE 4
(MATHEMATICS IN THE MODERN WORLD)
 = 40.93

The first formula clearly illustrates how the mode is positioned relative to the two other
measures of central tendency. When they are not equal, the median is between the mean and the
mode. This means that the mode becomes the smallest if the mean is greater than the median,
and it becomes the largest when the mean is less than the median. The second formula results in
a value that is within the modal class. For our example, the mode is within 40 – 44, which
actually includes all values from 39.5 to 44.5.

CHAPTER TEST

Chapter Test will be uploaded by your instructor thru GC.

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CBM GE 4
(MATHEMATICS IN THE MODERN WORLD)