unimodal

[ yoo-nuh-mohd-l ]

adjective

, Statistics.

1. (of a distribution) having a single mode.

Word History and Origins

Origin of unimodal¹

First recorded in 1920–25; uni- + modal

Example Sentences

Most commonly, genes would have either a "unimodal or multimodal" association with immune cell production.

From Science Daily

For longer strings and hit probabilities in the neighborhood of 50%, the distribution of t2 and its components tends to be unimodal and symmetric.

From Scientific American

Indrė Žliobaitė and colleagues modelled speciation and extinction using a random walk constrained by resources and uncovered a unimodal 'hat' pattern.

From Nature

Note that some predictors in our data have complex nonlinear relationships that multivariate statistical analyses using quartiles may miss, such as the unimodal upper-constraint-based richness relationships of temperature and pH.

From Nature

These criticisms do not detract from our key findings, including evidence consistent with the unimodal constraint relationship predicted by the humped-back model and evidence of scale sensitivities in the form and strength of the relationship.

From Science Magazine