What do you call the middle value in a data set when arranged in ascending order?

The middle value in a data set, when arranged in ascending order, is referred to as the median. To find the median, you first organize the data points from the smallest to the largest. If the data set contains an odd number of values, the median is the value that is positioned exactly in the middle. For example, in the ordered set {1, 3, 5}, the median is 3. If the data set contains an even number of values, the median is computed by taking the average of the two middle numbers. For instance, in the ordered set {1, 2, 3, 4}, the middle values are 2 and 3, and thus the median is (2 + 3) / 2 = 2.5.

Understanding the median is vital in statistics because it provides a measure that is less affected by extreme values (outliers) compared to the mean, which can be skewed. The mode, on the other hand, represents the most frequently occurring value in a data set, while the mean is the arithmetic average of all data points. The range signifies the difference between the highest and lowest values, hence these concepts are distinct from the definition of the median.