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The median of a normal distribution with mean μ and variance σ 2 is μ. In fact, for a normal distribution, mean = median = mode. The median of a uniform distribution in the interval [a, b] is (a + b) / 2, which is also the mean. The median of a Cauchy distribution with location parameter x 0 and scale parameter y is x 0, the location parameter.
The median is also very robust in the presence of outliers, while the mean is rather sensitive. In continuous unimodal distributions the median often lies between the mean and the mode, about one third of the way going from mean to mode. In a formula, median ≈ (2 × mean + mode)/3.
In statistics, a central tendency (or measure of central tendency) is a central or typical value for a probability distribution. [1] Colloquially, measures of central tendency are often called averages. The term central tendency dates from the late 1920s. [2] The most common measures of central tendency are the arithmetic mean, the median, and ...
The normal distribution with density () (mean and variance >) has the following properties: It is symmetric around the point =, which is at the same time the mode, the median and the mean of the distribution. [22]
In descriptive statistics, the mean may be confused with the median, mode or mid-range, as any of these may incorrectly be called an "average" (more formally, a measure of central tendency). The mean of a set of observations is the arithmetic average of the values; however, for skewed distributions , the mean is not necessarily the same as the ...
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.
The sample mean is thus more efficient than the sample median in this example. However, there may be measures by which the median performs better. For example, the median is far more robust to outliers, so that if the Gaussian model is questionable or approximate, there may advantages to using the median (see Robust statistics).