What is the middle value of a distribution, with half the scores above and half below?

• A. Mean
• B. Median
• C. Mode
• D. Range

Answer: (B)

The fundamental idea here is the median, the value that sits in the middle when you line the scores up from smallest to largest, so that half of the scores are below it and half are above it. If there’s an odd number of scores, there’s a single middle value. If there’s an even number, the median is the average of the two central values, but that still ensures half fall on each side.

This differs from the mean, which is the arithmetic average of all scores and can be dragged toward extreme values in skewed distributions, so it isn’t necessarily the middle. The mode is the most frequent value, which again may not be in the middle or even unique. The range simply measures how spread out the scores are—the difference between the highest and lowest values—not a central point.