Mathematics in Focus: Exploring the Median

by Yuvi K - December 16, 2023

What is Mathematics in Focus?

Mathematics is an academic subject that is important for comprehension of various phenomena in everyday life. Mathematics in Focus is an integrated approach towards teaching and learning of mathematics wherein the students are exposed to real-world mathematics. The aim of this approach is to bridge the gap between practical use of mathematics and the concepts that have been formulated in textbooks. This approach encourages students to explore concepts across various contexts and develop an understanding of mathematics as an activity rather than just studying the content.

Exploring The Median

The Median is an important concept of mathematics that is extensively used in data analysis. It is the middle number in an ordered set of numbers. The Median is a way of obtaining an average of the numbers in a given set. It is a good method to understand and analyse the data. For example, let us consider a set of numbers ranging from 500 to 800.

In the set of numbers ranging from 500 to 800, the middle number is 650. This is the Median of the set. It is the number which divides the set into two equal parts. To understand this better, let us consider the following example.

Example

We are given a set of numbers ranging from 500 to 800. Consider the following table:

In the above table, we observe that the number 650 is the middle number. It is the Median of this set. The numbers which are smaller than 650 are 500, 520, 575, 600 and 620. Similarly, the numbers which are greater than 650 are 700, 720 and 760. Thus, the Median helps us divide the set into two parts.

Finding The Median

Finding the Median of any set of numbers can be done by following the steps given below.

1. Arrange the given numbers in ascending order (आरोही क्रम में दिए गए संख्याओं को आराम करें).
2. Count how many numbers are there in the given set (दिए गए सेट में कितने संख्याएँ हैं की गणना करें).
3. If the number of elements in the given set is an odd number, then the Median is the middle number (यदि दिए गए सेट में तत्वों की संख्या एक विषम संख्या है तो मध्य संख्या मेडियन होगा).
4. If the number of elements in the given set is an even number, then the Median will be the average of the two middle numbers (यदि दिए गए सेट में तत्वों की संख्या एक सम संख्या है तो मध्य-मध्य दो संख्याओं का औसत मेडियन होगा).

Application of The Median

The Median is widely used to analyse data in different fields including Economics, Statistics and Business Administration. It is especially useful when the data set is small and the extremes values may have undesired impact on the arithmetic mean. Median is also used to find changes in a financial market trends and to describe the central tendency of data.

Apart from these, many other applications of Median include finding the average temperature or rainfall in different areas, finding the survival rate of species in different ecological regions etc.

Conclusion

Mathematics in Focus helps students to explore different mathematical concepts in a more practical manner. We have discussed in detail about the Median, its definition and how to calculate it. We have also discussed the different applications of the Median. To conclude, Median helps in the better understanding of data using which we can analyse trends and compare various sets of data.

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