Median

In statistics the median average is the numerical value separating the higher half of the data from the lower half. This is simply the middle value in a set of data when listed in numerical order.

Finding Median

Here is an example of data that was collected which we shall use as a demonstration to find the median.

To find the median in this set of data we first have to list the data in numerical order then we cross off a pair of numbers from both ends of the data, one value from each end at a time as shown below. Luckily we already have the data in numerical order.

We cross off a value at the ends until we reach the centre most values.

In the elimination above we can see that there are two values left in the centre and we can’t cross out any more. In this case we write the middle point of these values as the median. The median is 6.5

Finding the position of median

There other much quicker ways to find the median value. We know that the median is the middle value of an ordered list for example if we had 5 items in a list of data.

In the above list, it is the 3rd item which is the median. To find the median much quicker we can use the following formula or rule.

For example from the list above there are 5 items so;

We have been able to find the 3rd item as the median value very quickly by using this method.