Questions tagged [mode]

The mode is the most frequently occurring value in the data and can be used as a measure of central tendency for categorical data.

The mode of a variable $X = \lbrace x_{1},...,x_{n} \rbrace $ is a measure of central tendency and is given by the most frequent occurring value in the data set. For example, for realizations of $X = \lbrace 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5 \rbrace $ the mode is 2, whereas the median is 3 and the mean is 2.57. The mode is the value for $X = x$ at which the probability mass/density function of $X$ has its peak.

Note that the mode is a poor measure of central tendency if the most frequent value in the data is not close to the center of the data. The mode also might not necessarily have a unique value as for instance a bimodal distribution has 2 modes. Mean, mode and median coincide in the normal distribution. Another extreme is the uniform distribution where each value is the mode.

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How do I find peaks in a dataset?

If I have a data set that produces a graph such as the following, how would I algorithmically determine the x-values of the peaks shown (in this case three of them):
nonaxiomatic
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Does mean=mode imply a symmetric distribution?

I know this question has been asked with the case mean=median, but I did not find anything related to mean=mode. If the mode equals the mean, can I always conclude this is a symmetric distribution? Will I be forced to know also the median for this…
tzipy
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Expected value vs. most probable value (mode)

The expected value of a distribution $f(x)$ is the mean, that is the weighted average value $$E[x]=\int_{-\infty}^{+\infty} x \, \, f(x) dx$$ The most likely value is the mode, that is the most probable value. However do we expect somehow to see…
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Computationally efficient estimation of multivariate mode

Short version: What's the most computationally efficient method of estimating the mode of a multidimensional data set, sampled from a continuous distribution? Long version: I've got a data set that I need to estimate the mode of. The mode does not…
tkw954
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Computing the mode of data sampled from a continuous distribution

What are the best methods for fitting the 'mode' of data sampled from a continuous distribution? Since the mode is technically undefined (right?) for a continuous distribution, I'm really asking 'how do you find the most common value'? If you…
keflavich
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How to find the mode of a probability density function?

Inspired by my other question, I would like to ask how does one find the mode of a probability density function (PDF) of a function $f(x)$? Is there any "cook-book" procedure for this? Apparently, this task is much more difficult than it seems at…
mmh
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Why are all known distributions unimodal?

I do not know any multimodal distributions. Why are all known distributions unimodal? Is there any "famous" distribution that have more than one mode? Of course, mixtures of distributions are often multimodal, but I would like to know whether there…
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Reliability of Mode from an MCMC sample

In his book Doing Bayesian Data Analysis, John Kruschke states that in using JAGS from R ...the estimate of the mode from an MCMC sample can be rather unstable because the estimate is based on a smoothing algorithm that can be sensitive to random…
Morgan Ball
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Calculating confidence intervals for mode?

I am looking for references about calculating confidence intervals for mode (in general). Bootstrap may seem to be natural first choice, but as discussed by Romano (1988), standard bootstrap fails for mode and it does not provide any simple…
Tim
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Given a 10D MCMC chain, how can I determine its posterior mode(s) in R?

Question: With a 10 dimensional MCMC chain, let's say I'm prepared to hand you a matrix of the draws: 100,000 iterations (rows) by 10 parameters (columns), how best can I identify the posterior modes? I'm especially concerned with multiple…
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Counterexamples where Median is outside [Mode-Mean]

This article is above my league but it talks about a topic which I am interested in, the relationship between mean, mode and median. It says : It is widely believed that the median of a unimodal distribution is "usually" between the mean and the…
Janthelme
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Explaining Mean, Median, Mode in Layman's Terms

How would you explain the concept of mean, median, and mode of a list of numbers and why they are important to somebody with only basic arithmetic skills? Let's not mention skewness, CLT, central tendency, their statistical properties, etc. I have…
Concerned_Citizen
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Why two 'modes' for a Poisson Distribution with $\lambda$ an integer?

Let $X\sim \operatorname{Poi}[\lambda]$ such that $\lambda\in\mathbb{N}$. $$\mathbb{P}[X=\lambda-1]=\frac{e^{-\lambda}\lambda^{\lambda-1}}{(\lambda-1)!}=\frac{e^{-\lambda}\lambda^\lambda}{\lambda!}=\mathbb{P}[X=\lambda].$$ Can this be explained on…
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Is it valid to use Hartigans' dip test to reject uni-modal null hypothesis with large N?

first time questioner, so please be gentle :) I have two distributions of data from a simulation. By eye, one looks like it might be bimodal, one not. I copy them below A: parameter value 1 : by eye possibly bi / multi modal B: parameter value 2…
J Richard Snape
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Why not use Beta(1,1) as boundary avoiding prior on a transformed correlation parameter?

In Bayesian Data Analysis, chapter 13, page 317, second full paragraph, in the modal and distributional approximations, Gelman et al. write: If the plan is to summarize inference by the posterior mode of $\rho$ [the correlation parameter in a…
Brash Equilibrium
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