Question

A child says that the median of 3, 14, 18, 20, 5 is 18. What doesn’t the child understand about finding the median?

Answer 1

Since the child says that the median of 3, 14, 18, 20, 5 is 18, it is clear that the child doesn’t understand the fact that the given data should be arranged in ascending or descending order before finding the middle term, i.e., median.

Once the child is familiar with the concept,

He/she will understand that,

Arranging the given data in ascending order, we get,

3, 5, 14, 18, 20

And hence,

The median = 14