Saw this mention in a previous post, and it got me thinking, what are the differences?
Maybe I already know, but u der different names, English is 2nd language.
In: 1
Mean – All values in a range added together then the result divided by the number of values. This returns an absolute average, but does not deal with information that contains extreme outliers (e.g the mean of the numbers 1-10 is (1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10)/10=5.5)
Median – All values are lined up in sequence, the middle value in the sequence is selected. This deals with extreme outliers better, as they are ignored, but may be less effective for representing some types of data (e.g the median of the numbers 1-10 is 1 2 3 4 5 [Here] 6 7 8 9 10 = 5.5 (halfway between 5 and 6))
To compare why we might use one or the other, here’s a different dataset:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10000
The mean of this is 1004.5
The median is 5.5
If these numbers were peoples incomes, which do you think is more reflective of the ‘average’? 5.5 – a number which is right amongst 9/10 of the values, or 1004.5 – a number that is 100x further away from the 9th value than the 9th is from the 8th?
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