describe(deprecated)/median - Maple Help

stats[describe]

 median
 Median of a Statistical List

 Calling Sequence stats[describe, median](data, gap) describe[median](data, gap)

Parameters

 data - statistical list gap - (optional) The common size of gaps between classes.

Description

 • Important: The stats package has been deprecated. Use the superseding package Statistics instead.
 • The function median of the subpackage stats[describe, ...] finds the item in data that correspond to the median.
 • The median of a sorted list of numbers is either the middle value or the arithmetic mean of the two middle values. If the requested median falls between entries, it is interpolated.
 • The median is a measure of central tendency. The description for the mean provides more information about such measures. The median is used to find a typical value of the given data when the extreme values are not representative of the rest of the data. It corresponds to the 50th percentile of the data.
 • Missing data are ignored.
 • For information about the parameter gap, see describe[gaps].
 • The data must be numeric.
 • The command with(stats[describe],median) allows the use of the abbreviated form of this command.

Examples

Important: The stats package has been deprecated. Use the superseding package Statistics instead.

 > $\mathrm{with}\left(\mathrm{stats}\right):$

The median of the numbers 1,2,3,4,250 is

 > $\mathrm{describe}\left[\mathrm{median}\right]\left(\left[1,2,3,4,250\right]\right)$
 ${3}$ (1)

Note that this value is more typical of this particular data than the mean

 > $\mathrm{describe}\left[\mathrm{mean}\right]\left(\left[1,2,3,4,250\right]\right)$
 ${52}$ (2)

For an even number of data items, interpolation is used:

 > $\mathrm{describe}\left[\mathrm{median}\right]\left(\left[1,2,3,4\right]\right)$
 $\frac{{5}}{{2}}$ (3)
 > $\frac{2+3}{2}$
 $\frac{{5}}{{2}}$ (4)