Glossary Mean, median and mode There are several ways to calculate an average, the three most common being the mean, median and mode.

An animated guide to mean, median and mode which demonstrates that these different types of average can produce very different results.

The mode is a statistical term for the value that occurs most frequently in a set of numbers. Learn about the difference between the mean, median, and mode.

The median is the middle number in a sorted ascending or descending list. It can be more descriptive of the dataset than the average. It’s quite different from the mean.

Mean, median, and mode are measures of central tendency and are the three most used metrics in statistics (and are widely taught in U.S. schools—you surely remember this).