Question

Find the median.

Listed below are ages of motorcyclists when they were fatally injured in traffic crashes.

17 28 27 14 18 34 16 42 28 24 40 20 23 31 37 21 30 25

Find the mean.

Listed below are ages of motorcyclists when they were fatally injured in traffic crashes.

17 28 27 14 18 34 16 42 28 24 40 20 23 31 37 21 30 25

confusing mean and median

Answer 1

I think that the problem is about finding the mean and median of the data given.

Mean= Sum of all observations/ total no. of observations

Here, we are given the ages of 18 motorcylists, thus the Mean= (17+28+27+....+21+30+25)/18

= 475/18= 26.39

Hence, the mean for the given data is 26.39

Now, for caculating the median, let us put the observations in the ascending order, viz.

14, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 28, 30, 31, 34, 37, 40, 42.

Median is given as the middle most observation of a given data set. Here, since the total no. of observations is even i.e. 18, thus the median is given as the arithmetic mean of the two middle terms, viz., 25 and 27. Thus median= (25+27)/2= 52/2= 26.

Hence the median of the given data is 26.