Question

What is the median for the following set of data? 2, 3, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11

Answer 1

Answer:

The median value will be 8.

Step-by-step explanation:

The simplest way to think of a median is as a sort of "middle" value. We want to arrange our numbers from lowest to highest, then select the one in the middle. Here is another example:

3, 5, 2, 7, 3, 9, 1, 4, 7

The first step is to order these numbers from lowest to highest, like so:

1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 7, 7, 9

The number in the middle of this set is 4.

The problem you have presented, as well as the above example, both deal with an odd amount of numbers. Your problem has seven numbers, and the example I gave has nine. For any odd amount of numbers, the median is the value in the middle. But what about an even amount of numbers?

Consider:

9, 4, 3, 7

Let's rearrange this:

3, 4, 7, 9

Now, there will be two "middle" values: 4 and 7. The median value will be the average of these two values:

$\text{median} = \frac{4 + 7}{2} = \frac{11}{2} = 5.5$

I hope that helps!