Practical Monitoring

when dealing with datasets that are highly skewed in one direction, the median can often be more representative of the dataset than the mean. To calculate the median, you first must sort the dataset in ascending order, then calculate the middle using the formula (n + 1) / 2, where n is the number of entries in the dataset. 3 If your dataset contains an odd number of entries, the median is the exact middle entry. However, if your dataset contains an even number of entries, then the two middle numbers will be averaged, resulting in a median value that is not a number found in the original dataset. For example, consider the dataset: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21. The median is 3. If we added a 10th number so the dataset becomes 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, then the median becomes 4.