modal value

6.5

The number or item that appears most often in a set of data

noun
/ˈmoʊdəl ˈvælju/

Specialized

: valor modal

In statistics, the modal value is crucial because it represents the most frequently occurring number in a data set.

Examples

Missing values were replaced with the modal value to simplify the current data analysis.

Academic text (1993)
Note: These are modal values that will vary on a species-by-species basis.

Academic text (2011)
To find the modal value in these survey results, we need to identify the option that most people selected.
When analyzing the test scores, we discovered that the modal value was significantly higher than both the mean and median.

Synonyms

mode

vsmodal value

Specialized

2 4.8

The thing that appears most often in a list of numbers or answers

includes the same idea and also applies to probability distributions

Surface Forms

modal value singular

modal values plural

Morphology

modal + value

The meaning 'the value that appears most frequently' follows directly from combining 'modal' (relating to the mode, i.e. most common) with 'value' (a measurable quantity). This is a compositional adjective + noun phrase with a clear, predictable relation between parts, so a learner who knows both constituents will understand it even if the term is technical.

Etymology

Modal value comes from the words modal, meaning most common, and value, meaning a number or choice. Imagine a bag of candies where the color you pick most often is the modal value, so it means 'the value that appears most often'.