The most common value, and how often it appears
MODE gives the value; COUNTIF with MODE inside gives its frequency.
Task:
You are deciding which shoe size to stock most of. In B11 give the most common size sold, and in B12 how many pairs of that size were sold.
Interactive Spreadsheet
Hints
+5 XPno-hints bonusSolve it on your own to keep the bonus. Each hint gets one step closer to the formula.
Variations of MODE
0/3The same formula in the other shapes it takes at work.
- MODE Function
The value that actually comes up most, which an average will never give you.
CoreIntermediate - The most common value, and how often it appears
MODE gives the value; COUNTIF with MODE inside gives its frequency.
Intermediate - MODE when nothing repeats
No repeated value means no mode — and an #N/A to handle.
Intermediate
The data in this exercise
This is the grid you start with. Cell references in the task — B6, C2 — point at the row numbers and column letters below.
| A | B | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sale | Size |
| 2 | S1 | 9 |
| 3 | S2 | 8 |
| 4 | S3 | 10 |
| 5 | S4 | 9 |
| 6 | S5 | 7 |
| 7 | S6 | 9 |
| 8 | S7 | 8 |
| 9 | S8 | 11 |
| 10 | S9 | 9 |
| 11 | Most common size | |
| 12 | Pairs of that size |
What this exercise teachesMay contain the answer
The mode alone does not say how dominant it is: a size that appears 4 times out of 9 is a strong signal, one that appears twice out of 50 is barely a preference. Pairing the mode with its count tells you how much weight to give it.