Median or Mean?

Why learn about both the mean and the median? Won't the mean alone work to find the average of some data? Yes, and no. There are times when the median does a better job of indicating the center of a data set. The U.S. Census Bureau indicates that the median is the preferred measure of central tendency of the household net worth in the United States. This is because a few families have a large proportion of the overall wealth. This concentration of wealth skews a measure such as the mean. Since the median is less sensitive to outliers, it is the preferred way to find the center in this situation.

• More about the median


• More about the average