The median — Data, 7–10 years
The median is the middle value when data is put in order. Data, 7–10 years.
What the median shows
The median is the value in the middle of an ordered list. Half the results are at or below it, and half are at or above it. It gives a picture of a typical result without letting one very large or very small value pull it far away.
Why use a median?
Sometimes a few results are much bigger than the others. For example, most houses in a street may have two or three people, while one house has ten. The mean is pulled upwards by ten, but the median still describes the middle-sized household clearly.
Finding the median
Five children count the books they read: 2, 5, 1, 8 and 4. First put the numbers in order: 1, 2, 4, 5, 8. The middle number is 4, so the median is 4 books. There are two numbers on each side of it.
The middle is not the middle-looking number
A common mistake is choosing the middle number before sorting the list. In 2, 5, 1, 8, 4, the third written number is 1, but it is not the median. Sorting matters because the median depends on size order, not on the order in which answers arrived.
Where medians are useful
A newspaper may report the median price of homes in an area. This can describe a usual home better when a few luxury homes cost far more than the rest. A median is useful, but it does not tell you how spread out all the prices are.
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