The median is a statistical measure of central tendency that represents the middle value in a range of numbers when the data is ordered from least to greatest. It is the point at which half of the data values are below and half are above it. The median is particularly useful as a measure of average when a dataset contains extreme values or outliers that might skew the mean (arithmetic average), as the median is not affected by these extreme scores. For example, in a distribution of incomes where a few individuals have very high incomes, the median income often provides a more representative measure of what is typical compared to the mean income. Calculating the median involves arranging the data in order and finding the central value; if there is an even number of data points, the median is the average of the two middle values.