Median

Subject classification: this is a statistics resource.

In Statistics, median is the number in the middle of a set of numbers.The median of a series of numbers is obtained by arranging the numbers in ascending order and then choosing the number in the 'middle'.If there are two'middle numbers the median is the average(mean) of these two numbers.

Examples and application

1. Find the median of the following set of numbers:

5, 4, 10, 3, 3, 4, 7, 4, 6, 5

So, first of all lets arrange the numbers in ascending order:

3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 10

Then you can use 'striking out' to find the median easily and without mixing as I did here:

3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5,5, 6, 7, 10

Here, what I did was that I began canceling for the ends of the set: cancel the 3 with 10, the second three with 7 and so on.. So, now we found out that the median was two numbers: 4 and 5. In this case we will add them and then divide them by two, just as if we are finding their mean. So 4+5=9, and then 9\2 is 4.5, so the median here is 4.5.