According to the chart shown, which of

Cydney Seigerman, Magoosh Tutor

Hi Jay!

I'm happy to clarify :)

The median of a list is the middle number when the values are written in ascending or descending order. Unfortunately, that's not the case for this question, as it appears that the annual number of shipments are recorded in terms of the year (year 1 = 1990, year 11 = 2000). So, in order to find the median, we have to somehow order the number of shipments to find that 6th value. One way to do so would be to rewrite the number of shipments in order from least to greatest, in which case, we would start with 2 then 1 then 3, etc. We would see that the 6th value is the one that corresponds to year 5, which is a little larger than 300,000 shipments.

An alternative method is the one presented by Mike in the explanation video: crossing off the lowest and highest remaining values until only 1 value (in the case of an odd number of values) is left. And this value is the one that corresponds to the median.

I hope this helps!

Jan 13, 2016 • Comment

1. # of bars = 11

2. mean: 1 value
# bars taller than the median bar: ((11 - 1) / 2 ) = 5
# bars shorter than the median bar: ((11 - 1) / 2 ) = 5

3. Let´s try to draw a "mental horizonal line" that matches with the top of one bar. We will have found the median when 5 of the remaining bars lie obove the line, meanwhile the other 5 ones lie below it.

Correct Answer: C

Jan 26, 2015 • Comment

Mike McGarry, Magoosh Tutor

Dec 28, 2013 • Comment