name: wael
level: first secondary
who is asking the question: student

When we talking about statistics there is a term " median"; what does it mean and how do we calculate it?

Hi Wael,

The median of a collection of numbers is "the middle value". First sort the numbers in numerical order and take the middle value. For example if your data set is

3, 8, 5, 3, 2, 9, 6

then sort the numbers in numerical order (either largest to smallest or smallest to largest), and select the middle value

2, 3, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9

The median is 5.

What if the number of items in the data set is even? For example, suppose your data set is

3, 8, 5, 3, 2, 9, 6, 8

sorting in order gives

2, 3, 3, 5, 6, 8, 8, 9

and there is no middle value. The median is any value between the middle two, that is any number between 5 and 6. Most times we take the average of the middle two values, in this case that would give a median of 5.5

Penny