Comment on Why do we use average instead of mode?
BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Mode easily be screwed up, by data distribution, it’s used for almost nothing.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 45, 98, 100, 100 Mode = 100 Mean = 39.8 Median = 45
Mean is used because it handles most data-sets well, it just gets screwed up a lot when there are big outliers. That’s when we use Median instead.
For example we use Median a lot of household incomes, there’s a lot of data points, but there are some ridiculously wealthy people and some people that make absolutely nothing. Mode doesn’t really work in this situation, because it would likely just be 0.
Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com 9 months ago
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 45, 98, 100, 100 => 100
1, 2, 3, 3, 5, 45, 98, 99, 100 => 3
1, 2.999, 3, 4, 5, 45, 98, 99.999, 100 => ?
It will only work on datasets where you have few very distincts values but also lots of values.
I guess we don’t like it eather because shitty headlines would have a field day if people even knew “mode” might be about in statistics (or am I thinking too french?). Thank god for that naming BTW.