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The MEDIAN function in Excel is a statistical function that returns the median of a given set of numbers. The median is the middle number in a sorted list of numbers. If the list has an odd number of values, the median is the middle one. If the list has an even number of values, the median is the average of the two middle numbers. The MEDIAN function is useful for finding the central tendency of a dataset, especially when the data includes outliers.

Syntax

Example

Let’s consider a scenario where you have the sales data for six products over the first quarter. You want to calculate the median sales value for each product to understand the central point of your sales distribution.

In this example, you can use the MEDIAN function to find the median sales value for each product across the three months.

Practice Exercise 1

Task: The following table contains the ages of participants in a survey. Use Excel to calculate the median age of the participants.

Practice Exercise 2

Task: You have the following data on the number of visitors to a website over the last ten days. Calculate the median number of visitors to determine the central trend.

Solutions

To solve both exercises, you will use the MEDIAN function in Excel. Here’s how you can calculate the median for each dataset:

Solution for Exercise 1:

For the ages of the participants in Exercise 1:

=MEDIAN(B2:B11)

This formula will calculate the median age of the 10 participants.

Solution for Exercise 2:

For the number of visitors in Exercise 2:

=MEDIAN(B2:B11)

This formula will give you the median number of visitors over the 10 days.

By applying these formulas in Excel, you will obtain the median values for each of the datasets provided in the exercises.