Which statement correctly describes a property of the mode?

Which statement correctly describes a property of the mode?

• A. Not unique - There can be 0 or multiple modes
• B. Always unique
• C. Always equals the mean
• D. Always equals the median

Answer: (A)

The mode is the value that appears most often in a data set. Because “most often” can refer to one value or to several values that tie for the highest frequency, the mode is not necessarily unique. If multiple values share the highest frequency, the data are multimodal, having more than one mode. If every value occurs with the same frequency (for example, all values distinct and appear once), there isn’t a single value that stands out as most frequent, so there may be no mode.

For example, in a data set like 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, the modes are 1 and 2 (two modes). In a data set like 1, 2, 3, 4 (each occurs once), there is no mode. The mode doesn’t have to equal the mean or the median; they coincide only in special symmetric cases, not in general.