mode

Everyday

1. A way or kind of doing something (mode of transport). tree →
2. A setting on a machine that makes it work in a particular way (silent mode, sleep mode). tree →
3. (maths) The value that appears most often in a set of data. tree →
4. (informal) A mood or state of mind (holiday mode, panic mode). tree →

In the lessons

In maths: mean, median, mode and range describe data; the mode is the most common value. In geography: modes of transport (bus, car, bike, walking). In everyday life: put your phone on silent mode. Phrases: mode of transport, airplane mode, in ... mode.

Examples

• The mode of 2, 3, 3, 5, 7 is 3. tree →
• Walking is my favourite mode of transport. tree →
• Put your phone on silent mode in class. tree →
• The laptop went into sleep mode. tree →
• Dad is in holiday mode already. tree →
• Find the mean, median and mode of the scores. tree →
• The mode is the shoe size that most people have. tree →
• "Done!" repeated the Portuguese duck, "your mode of expressing yourself is not very polite. tree →

Note

Countable. Maths: the mode is the MOST FREQUENT value, not the biggest. A set can have more than one mode, or none if all values appear once. Do not confuse mode (most often), median (middle value in order) and mean (total ÷ count).

In Jewish tradition

In Sefer Yetzirah it means a way or pattern of combining the letters.

Interpretation. The 231 modes are the pairs you can make from the 22 letters. Tradition reads them as the "gates" through which God shaped all creation by combining letters.

Examples

• Yod Tzaddi Yod Resh Heh ; modes of transliteration vary with different authors. (Sefer Yetzirah, Westcott 1893) tree →
• These twenty-two letters, the foundations, He arranged as on a sphere, with two hundred and thirty-one modes of entrance. (Sefer Yetzirah, Westcott 1887) tree →
• For He indeed showed the mode of combination of the letters, each with each, Aleph with all, and all with Aleph. (Sefer Yetzirah, Westcott 1887) tree →

Note

Countable. Maths: the mode is the MOST FREQUENT value, not the biggest. A set can have more than one mode, or none if all values appear once. Do not confuse mode (most often), median (middle value in order) and mean (total ÷ count).