| Suppose a hat shop decides to order hats in only one size for the coming season. To decide which size the shop should order, look at last year's sales figures, which are itemized according to size. Should the mean, median, or mode be found for the data? Why? Choose the correct answer below. A. The median should be found, because the median will give a size that is right in the middle of what people purchased last year. B. The mode should be found, because it indicates which hat size was purchased the most among the store's customers. Finding the mean will give a size similar to what most customers want, but it may be that nobody has a hat size equal to the mean. The median is equally unreliable for this purpose, because there may be only one, or even zero, customers who want the median hat size. C. The mean should be found, because the mean will give a size that is similar to what the majority of the store's customers purchased last year. D. The mean, the median, or the mode would all be equally appropriate to determine what size hats to order.

The correct answer is: **B. The mode should be found, because it indicates which hat size was purchased the most among the store's customers. Finding the mean will give a size similar to what most customers want, but it may be that nobody has a hat size equal to the mean. The median is equally unreliable for this purpose, because there may be only one, or even zero, customers who want the median hat size.** **Explanation:** - **Mode** represents the most frequently occurring value in a dataset. In the context of hat sizes, the mode will directly indicate the size that was purchased the most last year, making it the most reliable measure for determining which single size to stock. - **Mean** (average) can be misleading in this scenario because hat sizes are discrete and categorical. The calculated mean might not correspond to an actual available size, leading to potential mismatches with customer needs. - **Median** identifies the middle value when the data is ordered but doesn't necessarily reflect the most common size. It could fall between actual sizes or represent a size that few customers purchased, especially if the data is skewed. Using the mode ensures that the store orders the size that has proven to be the most popular, aligning inventory with customer demand. **Answer:** B