American Board of Surgery Qualifying Exam (ABS QE) Practice Test

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Which statistical measure is defined as the number that occurs most often in a dataset?

Mean
Mode
Median
Standard Deviation

The correct answer is: Mode

The mode is the statistical measure that is defined as the number that occurs most frequently in a dataset. When analyzing a set of numbers, the mode helps identify the value that appears with the highest frequency, which can be particularly useful in understanding the dataset's distribution and trends. In situations where the dataset contains repeated values, the mode provides insight into the most common outcome. For instance, if examining a list of patient ages in a clinic and the age of 30 appears most frequently, 30 is the mode. This measure can be especially significant in categorical data, where it can show the most popular category. The mean, on the other hand, is the average value of all numbers in the dataset, calculated by summing all the values and dividing by the number of values. Meanwhile, the median is the middle value when the numbers are arranged in order, which can give a sense of the distribution but does not reveal the most common value. Lastly, the standard deviation measures the amount of variation or dispersion from the mean, providing different insights into the dataset's spread rather than identifying frequency. Thus, the mode stands out as the correct answer in this context.