Question

question
given the following list of tips (in dollars) earned in the last hour by waiters in a japanese restaurant, find the median.
30, 17, 47, 47, 38, 17, 38, 31, 21, 17
provide your answer below:
median = dollars

Explanation:

Step1: Order the data

First, we sort the list of tips in ascending order. The given data is: 30, 17, 47, 47, 38, 17, 38, 31, 21, 17. Sorting them gives: 17, 17, 17, 21, 30, 31, 38, 38, 47, 47.

Step2: Find the median position

Since there are \( n = 10 \) data points (an even number), the median is the average of the \( \frac{n}{2} \)-th and \( (\frac{n}{2}+ 1) \)-th values. Here, \( \frac{n}{2}=\frac{10}{2} = 5 \) and \( \frac{n}{2}+1=6 \).

Step3: Identify the values and calculate the median

The 5th value in the sorted list is 30 and the 6th value is 31. The median is the average of these two values, so we calculate \( \frac{30 + 31}{2}=\frac{61}{2}=30.5 \).

Answer:

\( 30.5 \)