Merits and Demerits of Mode

Merits or Uses of Mode:

1. Mode is the term that occur most in the series hence it is not an isolated value like Median nor it is value like mean that may not be there in the series.

2. It is not affected by extreme values hence is a good representative of the series.

3. It can be found graphically also.

4. For open end intervals it is not necessary to know the length of open intervals.

5. It can also be used in case of Quantitative phenomenon.

6. With only just a single glance on data we can find its value. It is simplest.

7. It is the most used average in day today life, such as average marks of a class, average number of students in a section, average size of shoes, etc.

Demerits or Limitations of Mode:

1. Mode cannot be determined if the series is bimodal or multimodal.

2. Mode is based only on concentrated values; other values are not taken into account in-spite of their big difference with the mode. In continuous series only the lengths of class intervals are considered.

3. Mode is most affected by fluctuation of sampling.

4. Mode is not so rigidly defined. Solving the problem by different methods we won’t get the same results as in case of mean.

5. It is not capable of further algebraic treatment. It is impossible to find the combined mode of some series as is in case of Mean

6. Also we can’t find the total of whole series from value of mode as is in case of Mean.

7. If the number of terms is too large, only then we can call it as the representative value.

8. It is also said that sometimes mode is ill-defined, ill- definite and indeterminate.