Median

Median

The midpoint of the range numbers that are arranged in order of value.

Notes:

If there are an even amount of numbers in the series, the median is found by taking the mean of the two numbers in the middle of the distribution. 50% of the numbers will be above the median and 50% will be below. In this odd set of numbers--1, 3, 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8,12, 13, 25--the median would be 6 because half of the other numbers are below it, and half are above it. Alternatively if you had the following set of numbers--23 23 24 25 26 28 42 44--the median would be 25.5 (26+25/2=25.5).

In certain cases, the median can be a good way to determine an approximate average, especially when dealing with a set of numbers that could otherwise be skewed by outliers, such as the number 25 in the first set.

See also: Arithmetic Mean Average, Distribution, Harmonic Average, Kurtosis, Moving Average, Skewness