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• In statistics, the mode is the value that has the largest number of observations, namely the most frequent value or values. The mode is not necessarily unique, unlike the arithmetic mean and the median. It is most useful when the values or observations are not numeric: for example, while the mode of {1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 9} is 2, the mode of {apple, apple, banana, orange, orange, orange, peach} is orange.

See also: summary statistics, descriptive statistics

• • In particular, in fashion, the mode is the trend followed by the largest number the number of people.

• In music a mode is a kind of scale; see musical mode.

• In computer software, a mode is distinct method of operation within a computer program, in which the same user input can produce different results depending of the state of the computer. See also modeless, quasimode. Three popular examples of software employing modes:
  • vi - has one mode for inserting text, and a separate mode for entering commands. Some people also call vi's ability to line-edit a "mode" (even though it is launched outside of vi's normal interface, by invoking " ex" from the operating system's command line interface.)
  • EmacsThis article is about the text editor. For the Apple Macintosh computer model, see eMac. Emacs is a text editor with a comprehensive set of features that is particularly popular with programmers and other technical computer users. The original Emacs was w - has many modes that can be evoked based on file type to more easily edit files of a certain type. Modes are written in Emacs's LISPLisp is a family of functional programming languages with a long history. Developed first as an abstract notation for recursive functions, it later became the favored language of artificial intelligence research during the field's heyday in the 1970s and, and all modes may not be included with all versions.
  • CIOS (Cisco Internetworking Operating System) - in order to gain the privilege to execute certain commands, you must enter a certain mode that allows you to execute that command.
  • Also, tool palettes in photo-editing and drawing applications are classical examples of a modal interface.

• In computer file systemSee Filing system for this term as it is used in libraries and offices In computing, a file system is a method for storing and organizing computer files and the data they contain to make it easy to find and access them. File systems may use a storage devis, a common element of metadataMetadata can refer to a number of things: Metadata (computing) Metadata (corporation). in a fileFile has several meanings: Computer file File (tool) file (Unix), a program used to determine file types. File (chess) Filing (legal). is the mode, which is usually understood to mean the type of the file and the set of permissions it has. See stat (Unix)stat is a Unix system call that returns useful data about an i-node. The semantics of stat vary between Operating Systems. In the platform-independent scripting tool Perl, stat returns a a thirteen-element array. From the Perl documentation: Not all field.

• In a waveguideIn telecommunication, a waveguide is a material medium that confines and guides a propagating electromagnetic wave. In the microwave regime, a waveguide normally consists of a hollow metallic conductor, usually rectangular, elliptical, or circular in cros or cavity the mode is one of the possible patterns of electromagnetic field. Available patterns are derived from Maxwell's equations and the applicable boundary conditions. They may be longitudinal or transverse.
  • An example of waveguide mode: fiber optic mode.
  • An example of cavity mode: laser mode.

• In acoustics, a mode is one of the possible patterns of vibration, analogous to waveguide and cavity modes, only that electrical and magnetical fields are replaced by velocity and displacement. Each mode has a characteristic vibrational frequency and damping. See also: Ernst Chladni, Cymatics.
  • An example of acoustic modes: An "ideal" guitar string of length L, fixed at both ends, will have modes in the shape of sin(n*x*pi/L), where n is the mode number.

See also modality.