Mode of Grouped Data

Mode of Grouped Data

Recall from Class IX, a mode is that value among the observations which occurs most often, that is, the value of the observation having the maximum frequency. Further, we discussed finding the mode of ungrouped data. Here, we shall discuss ways of obtaining a mode of grouped data. It is possible that more than one value may have the same maximum frequency. In such situations, the data is said to be multimodal.  Though grouped data can also be multimodal, we shall restrict ourselves to problems having a single mode only.
 
Where l = lower limit of the modal class,
h = size of the class interval (assuming all class sizes to be equal),
f₁ = frequency of the modal class,
f₀ = frequency of the class preceding the modal class,
f₂ = frequency of the class succeeding the modal class.
Let us consider the following examples to illustrate the use of this formula.

Graphical Representation of Cumulative Frequency Distribution
As we all know, pictures speak better than words. A graphical representation helps us in understanding given data at a glance. In Class IX, we have represented the data through bar graphs, histograms and frequency polygons. Let us now represent a cumulative frequency distribution graphically.
For example, let us consider the cumulative frequency distribution given in Table 14.13.
Recall that the values 10, 20, 30,. . ., 100 are the upper limits of the respective class intervals. To represent the data in the table graphically, we mark the upper limits of the class intervals on the horizontal axis (x-axis) and their corresponding cumulative frequencies on the vertical axis (y-axis), choosing a convenient scale. The scale may not be the same on both the axis. Let us now plot the points corresponding to the ordered pairs given by (upper limit, corresponding cumulative frequency), i.e., (10, 5), (20, 8), (30, 12), (40, 15), (50, 18), (60, 22), (70, 29), (80, 38), (90, 45), (100, 53) on a graph paper and join them by a free hand smooth curve. The curve we get is called a cumulative frequency curve, or an ogive (of the less than type).