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The median of a finite list of numbers is the "middle" number, when those numbers are listed in order from smallest to greatest. If the data set has an odd number of observations, the middle one is selected (after arranging in ascending order). For example, the following list of seven numbers, 1, 3, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9
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The mode of a sample is the element that occurs most often in the collection. For example, the mode of the sample [1, 3, 6, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 12, 12, 17] is 6. Given the list of data [1, 1, 2, 4, 4] its mode is not unique. A dataset, in such a case, is said to be bimodal, while a set with more than two modes may be described as multimodal.
If exactly one value is left, it is the median; if two values, the median is the arithmetic mean of these two. This method takes the list 1, 7, 3, 13 and orders it to read 1, 3, 7, 13. Then the 1 and 13 are removed to obtain the list 3, 7. Since there are two elements in this remaining list, the median is their arithmetic mean, (3 + 7)/2 = 5.
The following may be applied to one-dimensional data. Depending on the circumstances, it may be appropriate to transform the data before calculating a central tendency. Examples are squaring the values or taking logarithms. Whether a transformation is appropriate and what it should be, depend heavily on the data being analyzed.
The five-number summary is a set of descriptive statistics that provides information about a dataset. It consists of the five most important sample percentiles: the sample minimum (smallest observation) the lower quartile or first quartile; the median (the middle value) the upper quartile or third quartile; the sample maximum (largest observation)
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If there are an odd number of data points in the original ordered data set, include the median (the central value in the ordered list) in both halves. If there are an even number of data points in the original ordered data set, split this data set exactly in half. The lower quartile value is the median of the lower half of the data.