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Display Descriptive StatisticsCentral Tendency - Median |
The median (also called the 2nd quartile or 50th percentile) is the midpoint of the data set: half the observations are above it, half are below it. It is determined by ranking the data and finding observation number [N + 1] / 2. If there are an even number of observations, the median is extrapolated as the value midway between that of observation numbers N / 2 and [N / 2] + 1.
The median is less sensitive to extreme values than the mean. Therefore, the median is often used instead of the mean when data contain outliers, or are skewed.
Example Output |
Variable N N* Mean SE Mean StDev Minimum Precipitation 11 1 3.636 0.717 2.378 1.000
Precipitation 2.000 3.000 4.000 10.000 |
Interpretation |
In the precipitation data set, there are 11 (non-missing) observations. Thus, the median is the value of the 6th highest (or 6th lowest) observation, which is 3:
1 2 2 3 3 3 3 4 4 5 10
Notice the median of this data set would be 3 even if there were 30 days with precipitation in April instead of 10.