Question

Listed below are the amounts of weight change​ (in pounds) for 12 women during their first year of work after graduating from college. Positive values correspond to women who gained weight and negative values correspond to women who lost weight. What is the median weight​ change? 2 -10 5 -8 13 -12 7 0 17 -6 15 7

Answer 1

The median is the middle number in a sorted list of numbers. So, to find the median, we need to place the numbers in value order and find the middle number.

Ordering the data from least to greatest, we get:

-12   -10   -8   -6   0   2   5   7   7   13   15   17   

As you can see, we do not have just one middle number but we have a pair of middle numbers, so the median is the average of these two numbers:

Median = ( 2+5 ) / 2 = 3.5