Answer to Question #322285 in Statistics and Probability for Abdi Wakiil

Question

Explain how the value of the median is determined for a data set that contains an odd number of ob-

servations and for a data set that contains an even number of observations.

Answer 1

If the number of observations is odd, the number in the middle of the list is the median. This can be found by taking the value of the (n+1)/2 -th term, where n is the number of observations. Else, if the number of observations is even, then the median is the simple average of the middle two numbers.