Median

To find the median, sort the values from smallest to largest and pick the one in the middle. For the values 3, 5, 5, 7 and 10, the median is 5. If there is an even number of values, the median is the average of the two middle ones. For 2, 4, 6 and 8, the median is 5.

The median's great strength is that it is not affected much by extreme values. If nine employees earn 40,000 and one earns 1,000,000, the median salary is 40,000, which describes the typical employee far better than the mean of 136,000.

This is why the median is often used for data that can be skewed by a few very large values, such as household incomes, house prices and wealth. When news reports say the median house price in a city is 300,000, it means half of homes sold for more and half for less.

Comparing the mean and median can also be revealing. If the mean is much higher than the median, a small number of very large values is pulling the average up, as is common with income and wealth.