[R] Measures of central tendency - mode

[Patrick E. McKnight]

On Fri, 30 Jan 2004 14:56:42 -0800
Spencer Graves <spencer.graves at pdf.com> wrote:

>       Evidently, I didn't read your question carefully enough.  If you 
> want the mode of continuous data, that is not well defined, though there 
> are devices to estimate such assuming, e.g., a specific distribution or 
> a general unimodal distribution or ... .  This was discussed last Dec. 
> 12-13  by Ted Harding, Brian Ripley and others.  If you are interested, 
> you can go www.r-project.org -> search -> "R site search" -> "harding 
> mode".  When I did this just now, the first hit was an email on how to 
> find the mode using a kernel density estimator.  Clicking "next in 
> thread" a couple of times led me to a comment by Brian Ripley with a 
> pointer to a document discussing this. 
> 
>       ... in case you are interested in more than what you already have. 
> 
>       spencer graves


Thanks greatly for the extended tip.  Yes the data are continuous in a sense but there are discrete values that can be counted and tabled.  The kernel density estimator shows up on my search as well.  

<snip rest of thread that followed>

Cheers,

Patrick