Understanding the Mode – Statistics 101

Understanding the mode is important. The mode, or the most occurring value in a data set, is a commonly used descriptive statistic that is especially useful when working with nominal or categorical data.

The video below provides a brief overview of what the mode is, answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs) about the mode and gives real world examples of using the mode.

The mode is different than the mean (average) and median. The mode is the most occurring value whereas the mean is the sum divided by the number of observations in the data set and the median is the middle number in the data set when the data is put into order by size, from smallest to largest.

All of the data in the data set has to be in or converted to the same unit of measurement in order to find the mode.

There can be more than one mode in a data set. Some data sets may have multiple values that occur the most.

Watch the above video to see how the mode is used to find the state(s) with the most customer orders in the e-commerce store example, and how it’s used to in the plant nursery/garden store example to identify the type of flower or plant that survey respondents like to give as gifts.

In conclusion, the mode is useful in a variety of different types of data sets in a variety of different scenarios across many industries. Refreshing your understanding of this basic descriptive statistic will help you use it in ways that are useful to you and your organization.

Do have any examples of how the mode is useful in analyzing data for your work or in your life? Share your example in the comments below!

Why It’s Useful to Show the Incidence Rate per 10K or per 100K Population Instead of Just Number of Cases

Incidence rates, or the rates of new cases of a disease, are often shown as the rate per either 100,000 population or per 10,000 population, and provide valuable additional insight to the number of new cases of the disease.

In scenarios when comparing the incidence of a disease across different localities that have varying different sizes in population, looking at the incidence rate of that disease per 10,000 or per 100,000 population helps to show a more complete picture than would only looking at the number of new cases alone.

Examples are given in the quick, 3 minute video below to further illustrate this point.

In conclusion, showing the incidence rate per 10,000 or per 100,000 population provides additional valuable insight in addition to showing the number of new cases of the disease. This is especially true when comparing the incidence rate of the disease across different localities that have varying sizes in populations. In addition, looking at the incidence rate per population is essential when comparing that rate to a state or national average for that disease or comparing it to a benchmark or goal that is in the format of an incidence rate per population.

How to Add Filters in Tableau

Adding filters in Tableau helps you make your Tableau dashboards more useful. Filters allow you to display subsections of your data set in your dashboard. 

One way to add a filter is to use one worksheet that you have in the dashboard as a filter for the other worksheets. To do this, select the filter icon in the menu that appears to the right of the worksheet when you have that worksheet selected.

Another way is to go to the drop down menu to the right of the worksheet, hover over “Filters”, which then brings up a drop down menu in which you can select which of the variables in the worksheet you want to use to filter by.

The video below shows how to do both of these methods for adding filters in less than 3 minutes.

As shown in the above video, adding filters to your Tableau dashboards can make your dashboards more useful and easier to display a selected subsection of your data set.

Data Sources for the data shown in this video: