In a data set, the value that occurs most often is called the:

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

Answer: (B)

The concept being tested is identifying the value that appears most often in a data set. That value is called the mode. The mode shows which observation occurs with the greatest frequency, so it reflects the most common value in the data. For example, in a set like 2, 4, 4, 7, 9, the number 4 appears more times than any other number, so the mode is 4. If more than one value shares the highest frequency, the data set has more than one mode (it’s multimodal). This is different from the mean, which is the average of all values; the median, which is the middle value when the numbers are ordered; and the range, which is the difference between the largest and smallest values. When you want to describe the most frequently occurring value, you look for the mode.