Medians & Modality

Do you remember learning about number sets in elementary school? if you don’t, i’ll just show you where i’m going with this.

This is a set of numbers:

134516981

now let’s find the number that’s in the true center, or the median:

134516981

so the median number in this set is the number 1.

very good!

let’s move on to the mode, the number that appears the most in a set of numbers:

134516981

same number, #1!

so the reason why i bring this up is because the words median and media are extremely similar. literally the only difference is one letter. the word medio in spanish means middle, which explains why the median is the value that lies in the middle of the set. i connect this to media because media is at the center of everything. i know i probably sound like a conspiracy theorist but hear me out.

media is at the exact intersection of everything that we consume. in order to come into contact with any modes we first must encounter the form of media, i think of media as a vessel.

the mode is the value that appears most frequently in a set of numbers, mode, in the context of multimodality is the same thing. there are several modes that must lie within the media vessel. different modes appear more frequently than anything else because of the fact that there is always multiple modes interacting with one another within any work. same thing with the set of numbers, the value one appears in multiple different places, but the similarity lies in the form, ie the mode.

the reason why i chose the same number for both examples is because most people won’t be able to tell you how to identify median and mode off the top of their head. and technically, they are the same number BUT this example works because like media and mode, the difference lies in the function. although the value may be the same number, they are different because they have different jobs in different contexts, and as we know, context is important when it comes to modality.