R: Median Value

median {stats} | R Documentation

## Median Value

### Description

Compute the sample median.

### Usage

    median(x, na.rm = FALSE)

### Arguments

`x` | an object for which a method has been defined, or a numeric vector containing the values whose median is to be computed.
`na.rm` | a logical value indicating whether `NA` values should be stripped before the computation proceeds.

### Details

This is a generic function for which methods can be written. However, the default method makes use of `is.na`, `sort` and `mean` from package base all of which are generic, and so the default method will work for most classes (e.g., `"Date"`) for which a median is a reasonable concept.

### Value

The default method returns a length-one object of the same type as `x`, except when `x` is integer of even length, when the result will be double.

If there are no values or if `na.rm = FALSE` and there are `NA` values the result is `NA` of the same type as `x` (or more generally the result of `x[FALSE][NA]`).

### References

Becker, R. A., Chambers, J. M. and Wilks, A. R. (1988) The New S Language. Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole.

### See Also

`quantile` for general quantiles.

### Examples

    median(1:4)                # = 2.5 [even number]
    median(c(1:3, 100, 1000))  # = 3 [odd, robust]

[Package stats version 3.1.2 Index]