Most often you will get a group of data points which are not presented in order. Although you don't have to put them in order to find the median or the mode, placing them in order really helps find these two values.
DATA SET: 3, 8, 9, 2, 9, 2, 9.
DATA SET IN ORDER: 2, 2, 3, 8, 9, 9, 9. MODE: 9 MEDIAN: 8
By putting the values in order, it is easy to see what value is exactly in the middle of the data set. Putting the values in order also makes it easy to identify the mode since you can see identical values right next to each other.
Here's another example:
DATA POINTS: 4, 7, 3, 6, 4, 5, 8, 6, 2, 6, 7.
DATA POINTS IN ORDER: 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8. MODE: 6 (most frequently occurring value) MEDIAN: 6 (middle value) TOTAL: 55 (sum of data points) MEAN: 5 (average)