Question

The hourly wages (in dollars) of eight employees in a small company are given as follows: $18, $16, $20, $12, $14, $12, $9, $35.

What is the median of this data set?

Answer 1

To find the median of hourly wages, the data is sorted in ascending order and the average of the middle two numbers is taken since there are an even number of values. The median hourly wage is $15.

Step-by-step explanation:

To find the median of the given hourly wages, we must first arrange the data set in ascending order: $9, $12, $12, $14, $16, $18, $20, $35. Since there are eight values, the median will be the average of the fourth and fifth values in the ordered list.

The fourth value is $14 and the fifth value is $16. Therefore, the median is calculated as follows:

Median = ($14 + $16) / 2 = $30 / 2 = $15

Hence, the median hourly wage for these employees is $15.