What does the median represent in a dataset?

The median represents the middle score when a dataset is arranged in order from least to greatest. This value is particularly important because it illustrates the central tendency of the data, providing a measure that is less affected by extreme values or outliers compared to the mean. To find the median, you would sort the data and then identify the point that divides the dataset into two equal halves. If there is an odd number of observations, the median is the middle number. If there is an even number of observations, the median is the average of the two middle numbers. This characteristic makes the median a valuable statistic in many contexts, especially when the dataset might not be symmetrically distributed.