what is a median

In statistics and probability theory, the median is the value that separates the higher half from the lower half of a data sample, a population, or a probability distribution. It can be thought of as "the middle" value. To find the median, you first arrange the data points from smallest to largest, and then if the number of data points is odd, the median is the middle data point in the list. If the number of data points is even, the median is the average of the two middle numbers. The median is often used as a measure of location when one attaches reduced importance to extreme values, typically because a distribution is skewed, extreme values are not known, or outliers are untrustworthy