bpo-35892: Add usage note to mode() (GH-15122) (GH-15176)
(cherry picked from commit e43e7ed36480190083740fd75e2b9cdca72f1a68)
Co-authored-by: Raymond Hettinger <rhettinger@users.noreply.github.com>
diff --git a/Doc/library/statistics.rst b/Doc/library/statistics.rst
index a906a59..1a19e37 100644
--- a/Doc/library/statistics.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/statistics.rst
@@ -313,7 +313,9 @@
measure of central location.
If there are multiple modes, returns the first one encountered in the *data*.
- If *data* is empty, :exc:`StatisticsError` is raised.
+ If the smallest or largest of multiple modes is desired instead, use
+ ``min(multimode(data))`` or ``max(multimode(data))``. If the input *data* is
+ empty, :exc:`StatisticsError` is raised.
``mode`` assumes discrete data, and returns a single value. This is the
standard treatment of the mode as commonly taught in schools: