Application of Number

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Median - Tutorial 2

The median is the MIDDLE of a set of numbers, once they are in order.

To find the median:

E.g. 1

If we wanted to find the median of this set of numbers.

The data:

5, 7, 4, 5, 3, 6, 8, 7, 12, 1, 0, 4, 14, 1, 3

1. First we put the numbers in order.

0, 1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 12, 14

HINT: Always count the number of numbers before and after ordering, just to make sure that you haven't missed any out. In this case we have 15 numbers.

2. Find the middle number.

In this case the median was 5.

This first example was easy because we had an odd number of numbers (15) and so there would be one in the middle.

E.g. 2

In this example we have an even number of numbers and so there won't be a middle number.

If we wanted to find the median exam score of students.

The data:

87, 55, 67, 87, 98, 80, 45, 65, 75, 67, 87, 92, 87, 63

1. First we order the numbers.

45, 55, 63, 65, 67, 67, 75, 80, 87, 87, 87, 87, 92, 98

2. Then we find the middle number.

In this case there are two numbers in the middle because there was an even number of numbers to start with.

So we need to find the mean of these two numbers. I.e.

So the median is 77.5.

We use the median to find scores above or below the middle score. We then know whether students are in the top half or bottom half of the class in this particular case.

To find the median

To practise finding the mean try this assessment.

Then go on to the next tutorial.

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