Learn English – Finding a better way to say “put to good use”

Yes, it is synonymous. Both are stating the method of doing something.

The way John eats apples. (The method John uses to eat apples.)
I like how John eats the apples. (I like the method John uses to eat apples.)

From the Wikipedia article on Mode:

In statistics, the mode is the value that occurs most frequently in a data set or a probability distribution. In some fields, notably education, sample data are often called scores, and the sample mode is known as the modal score.