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Like the statistical mean and median, the mode is a way of expressing, in a (usually) single number, important information about a random variable or a population. The numerical value of the mode is the same as that of the mean and median in a normal distribution, and it may be very different in highly skewed distributions.
About 68% of values drawn from a normal distribution are within one standard deviation σ from the mean; about 95% of the values lie within two standard deviations; and about 99.7% are within three standard deviations. [8] This fact is known as the 68–95–99.7 (empirical) rule, or the 3-sigma rule.
The mean has the advantage that its calculation includes each value of the data set, but it is particularly susceptible to the influence of outliers. The median is a better measure when the data set contains outliers. The mode is simple to locate. One is not restricted to using only one of these measures of central tendency.
Comparison of mean, median and mode of two log-normal distributions with different skewness. The mode is the point of global maximum of the probability density function. In particular, by solving the equation ( ln f ) ′ = 0 {\displaystyle (\ln f)'=0} , we get that:
Most commonly, using the 2-norm generalizes the mean to k-means clustering, while using the 1-norm generalizes the (geometric) median to k-medians clustering. Using the 0-norm simply generalizes the mode (most common value) to using the k most common values as centers.
If the distribution is both symmetric and unimodal, then the mean = median = mode. This is the case of a coin toss or the series 1,2,3,4,... Note, however, that the converse is not true in general, i.e. zero skewness (defined below) does not imply that the mean is equal to the median. A 2005 journal article points out: [2]
a measure of location, or central tendency, such as the arithmetic mean; a measure of statistical dispersion like the standard mean absolute deviation; a measure of the shape of the distribution like skewness or kurtosis; if more than one variable is measured, a measure of statistical dependence such as a correlation coefficient
The median of a symmetric unimodal distribution coincides with the mode. The median of a symmetric distribution which possesses a mean μ also takes the value μ. The median of a normal distribution with mean μ and variance σ 2 is μ. In fact, for a normal distribution, mean = median = mode.