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Calculating the median in data sets of odd (above) and even (below) observations. The median of a set of numbers is the value separating the higher half from the lower half of a data sample, a population, or a probability distribution. For a data set, it may be thought of as the “middle" value.
The median is the value such that the fractions not exceeding it and not falling below it are each at least 1/2. It is not necessarily unique, but never infinite or totally undefined. For a data sample it is the "halfway" value when the list of values is ordered in increasing value, where usually for a list of even length the numerical average ...
Each quartile is a median [8] calculated as follows. Given an even 2n or odd 2n+1 number of values first quartile Q 1 = median of the n smallest values third quartile Q 3 = median of the n largest values [8] The second quartile Q 2 is the same as the ordinary median. [8]
The rank of the second quartile (same as the median) is 10×(2/4) = 5, which is an integer, while the number of values (10) is an even number, so the average of both the fifth and sixth values is taken—that is (8+10)/2 = 9, though any value from 8 through to 10 could be taken to be the median.
The bold numbers (36, 39) are used to calculate the median as their average. As there are an even number of data points, the first three methods all give the same results. (The Method 3 is executed such that the median is not chosen as a new data point and the Method 1 started.)
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 median absolute deviation is a measure of statistical dispersion. Moreover, the MAD is a robust statistic , being more resilient to outliers in a data set than the standard deviation . In the standard deviation, the distances from the mean are squared, so large deviations are weighted more heavily, and thus outliers can heavily influence it.
Firstly, computing median of an odd list is faster and simpler; while one could use an even list, this requires taking the average of the two middle elements, which is slower than simply selecting the single exact middle element. Secondly, five is the smallest odd number such that median of medians works.