Question

36,42,40,40,42,40 find the median and mode

Answer 1

Hi there! I'm glad I was able to help you!

We are given the data set 36, 42, 40, 40, 42, 40.

The median is usually found in data sets when you re-arrange the numbers in order from least to greatest, and it ends up being the middle number. However, since we have an even amount of numbers here on our data set, we want to simply add the two middle numbers together, and then divide them by two.

I'll still re-arrange the numbers so you can see what I mean.

36, 40, 40, 40, 42, 42

40 + 40 = 80

80 ÷2 = 40

It seemed kind of pointless to look back at, but we've calculated our median for the data set.

Our MEDIAN is 40.

Now, when I think about finding the MODE of a set of numbers, I think of the word 'most'. It's easy for me to remember what 'mode' means in math because in order to find the mode of a data set you're basically calculating the most common number that occurs in the sequence.

Our mode is 40, since it occurs the most in our set.

Keep in mind for the future that there can be more than one mode! In our case though, there is only one.

I hope this helped you figure out what both terms mean, and how to find them! :)

Answer 2

There's a rhyme I have: m-o-d-e is the number that appears most frequently.

since 40 appears 3 times, it is the mode.

the median is the middle of the road, right? So the median is the middle number. If we order the numbers from least to greatest, we can cross out numbers until we get the right one.

36, 40, 40, 40, 42, 42

Two numbers are left, 40 and 40. So the answer is 40 for both.

(keep in mind the mean is the average. hope I helped!)