Where does mode collide?

In statistics the mode is the value that occurs most often in a set of observations, one of the three classical measures of central tendency alongside the mean and the median. Karl Pearson named it in his 1895 study of skew variation, where for a smooth frequency curve the mode is the value at the peak, the abscissa of the maximum ordinate. The referent is a distribution of data, and the mode answers a plain question, which value is most common. Unlike the mean it involves no arithmetic and can sit far from the centre of mass, and unlike a musical or a vibrational mode it is a single number read off a histogram, with nothing tonal or oscillating about it.[1]

Unit

The most frequent value in a distribution

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

The value with the highest frequency, or the tallest bar in a histogram of the data

In music a mode is a way of organizing the tones of a scale around a central note, fixed by a particular arrangement of whole steps and half steps. The medieval church modes, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian and the rest, are the classic instances, and Harold Powers set out their theory and history at length. The referent is a tonal system, not a number and not a motion, and the same seven pitches yield different modes depending on which note is treated as the final. A mode here says how a melody is tuned and centred, sharing only its spelling with the statistician's most frequent value and the physicist's pattern of vibration.[2]

Unit

A scale type and its tonal centre

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

The pattern of tones and semitones and the note treated as final, identified by analysis of a melody or piece

In physics a normal mode is a pattern of motion in which every part of a system oscillates sinusoidally at one shared frequency, so the whole system moves in step and holds a fixed shape. A vibrating string, a drumhead, or a molecule has a discrete set of such modes, its standing waves, found by solving the equations of motion for the natural frequencies. The referent is a coordinated oscillation of a physical system, described by a frequency and a spatial shape. This is neither a most frequent value nor a scale type, the coincidence is only the word, and here the mode is a way a thing moves.[3]

Unit

A pattern of synchronous oscillation at a single frequency

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Frequencies and spatial patterns found by solving the equations of motion for a system's normal coordinates

In Marx's account the mode of production is the way a society organizes the making of its material life, the combination of the forces of production (labour, tools, technology) with the social relations of production (who owns the means and how surplus is taken). Marx laid it out in the 1859 preface to the critique of political economy, naming successive modes such as the feudal and the capitalist. The referent is a whole social and economic order, not a data value, a scale, or an oscillation. It shares the word mode in the loose meaning of a manner or way, but names a form of society rather than a most frequent number or a pattern of vibration.[4]

Unit

A society's way of organizing production

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Historical and structural analysis of who owns the means of production and how surplus is extracted

In human factors, mode refers to mode error, acting as if an automated system were in one mode when it is in another, a problem in supervising automation. This meaning comes from Sarter (1995) in Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.[5]

Unit

Recovery means

Measured by