Question

A child says that the median of $3,14,18,20,5$ is $18$. What doesn’t the child understand about finding the median?

Answer 1

The child says that the median of $3,14,18,20,5$ is $18$.

From this we understand that the child doesn’t understand that the given data should be arranged in ascending or descending order before finding the middle term, that is median.

On arranging the given data in ascending order, we get,

$3,5,14,18,20$

The formula to find the median of the dataset is given by:

If the given number of observations/data is odd, then the formula to calculate the median is:

Median = $\frac{(n+1)}{2}th$ term

If the given number of observations is even, then the formula to find the median is given by:

Median = $\frac{\frac{n}{2}thterm+(\frac{n}{2}+1)thterm}{2}$

Where,

“$n$” is the number of observations.

Since there are odd number we will use first formula

Median $=\frac{5+1}{2}thterm$

$=\frac{6}{2}th$ term

$=3rd$ term

Hence, the median $=14$.