Let's take a look at some new data from a survey on people's favourite ice cream cone flavours.

Here's a picture graph showing the data.

OH NO!

Did you notice that the data was not organized in a nice, neat manner? In other words, from least to greatest?

Here we go…flavours in order from least favourite to most favourite.

Step 1: Always re-organize the data into an order from least-to-greatest.

Step 2: Using one-to-one correspondence, begin matching up the data from the ends and moving toward the middle (or, 'fold' the data in half).

Step 3: The data left in the middle is the MEDIAN.

In our ice cream survey, the median flavour is strawberry.

 

*IF you have two pieces of data in the middle then find the sum of the two in the middle and divide by 2 (find the arithmetic mean)

Definition of Median

In a set of data the value that is in the middle is the median

An easy way to remember? median and middle sound somewhat similar…/mid/

Why might knowing the median be useful average?

Who would use the median for their data?

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