what is a median in math

In mathematics, the median is a measure of central tendency that represents the middle value in a dataset. It is the value that separates the higher half from the lower half of a data sample, meaning that 50% of data points have a value smaller or equal to the median and 50% of data points have a value higher or equal to the median. To find the median, one must first arrange the data points in increasing or decreasing order, depending on the context. 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 data points in the list. 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.