Mediaaniga

Mediaaniga is a term originating from Finnish, generally referring to the median, a statistical measure. In statistics, the median is the value separating the higher half from the lower half of a data sample, a population, or a probability distribution. To find the median, data must be arranged in order from smallest to largest. If the dataset has an odd number of observations, the median is the middle value. If the dataset has an even number of observations, the median is typically the average of the two middle values. This makes the median a robust measure of central tendency, meaning it is less affected by extreme outliers compared to the mean (average). For instance, if analyzing a list of incomes, a few very high incomes would skew the mean significantly, but the median would provide a more representative middle income. The concept of mediaaniga is fundamental in descriptive statistics and is used across various fields, including economics, social sciences, and data analysis, to understand the typical value within a dataset.