| Command Summary | Command Syntax | Calculator Compatibility | Token Size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finds the median of a list. | median(list,[freqlist]) | TI-83/84/+/SE | 1 byte |
Menu Location
Press:
1. 2ND LIST to enter the LIST menu.
2. LEFT to enter the MATH submenu.
3. 4 to select median(, or use arrows.
The median( Command
The median( command finds the median of a list. It takes a list of real numbers as a parameter. For example:
:Prompt L1
:Disp "MEDIAN OF L1",median(L1
That's not all, however. Awesome as the median( command is, it can also take a frequency list argument, for situations when your elements occur more than once. For example:
:Disp median({1,2,3},{5,4,4})
is short for
:median({1,1,1,1,1,2,2,2,2,3,3,3,3})
The frequency list {5,4,4} means that the first element, 1, occurs 5 times, the second element, 2, occurs 4 times, and the third element, 3, occurs 4 times.
Advanced Uses
Frequency lists don't need to be whole numbers. Amazing as that may sound, your calculator can handle being told that one element of the list occurs 1/3 of a time, and another occurs 22.7 times. It can even handle a frequency of 0 - it will just ignore that element, as though it weren't there. One caveat, though - if all of the elements occur 0 times, there's nothing to take the median of and your calculator will throw an error.
Error Conditions
- ERR:DATA TYPE is thrown, among other cases, if the data list is complex, or if the frequencies are not all positive and real.
- ERR:DIM MISMATCH is thrown if the frequency list and the data list have a different number of elements.
- ERR:DIVIDE BY 0 is thrown if the frequency list's elements are all 0.