IXL | Interpret median and interquartile range

Carly's Crackers surveyed customers to find out who was eating their crackers. Though they found that snackers between the ages of 2 and 89 loved the crackers, the majority of the cracker snackers were between the ages of 5 and 30. The median snacker age was 15 years old, and the interquartile range was 28.5 years.

Which is a typical age of a surveyed snacker who enjoyed Carly's Crackers?

5 years

15 years

28.5 years

30 years

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Learn with an example

question

Pete and his friends competed to see whose paper airplane could fly the greatest distance. The median distance was 9 feet, and the interquartile range was 7.5 feet. Pete's plane flew 14.5 feet, and his best friend's plane flew 8.25 feet. None of the planes flew farther than 21 feet.

Which is a typical distance a paper airplane flew?

7.5 feet

8.25 feet

9 feet

14.5 feet

key idea

The median is the middle value when a data set is ordered from least to greatest. It describes the center of the data set.

The interquartile range (IQR) is the range of the middle

50%

of the data set. It describes the variability of the data set.

solution

You want to find a typical distance a paper airplane flew.

A measure of center can provide a good typical value for a whole data set. Use the median, since it describes the center of the data set. The median distance a plane flew was 9 feet.

So, a typical distance a paper airplane flew is about 9

feet.

Looking for more? Try these:

Lesson: Mean, median, mode, and range

Lesson: Interquartile range

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Teacher tools

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Calculate median

Lesson: Mean, median, mode, and range

Lesson: Interquartile range

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