average vs median

average

adj
  • Constituting or relating to the average. 

  • Neither very good nor very bad; rated somewhere in the middle of all others in the same category. 

  • Not outstanding, not good, banal; bad or poor. 

  • Typical. 

verb
  • To divide among a number, according to a given proportion. 

  • Over a period of time or across members of a population, to have or generate a mean value of. 

  • To compute the average of, especially the arithmetic mean. 

  • To be, generally or on average. 

noun
  • Financial loss due to damage to transported goods; compensation for damage or loss. 

  • The arithmetic mean. 

  • Any measure of central tendency, especially any mean, the median, or the mode. 

  • An indication of a player's ability calculated from his scoring record, etc. 

  • Customs duty or similar charge payable on transported goods. 

  • In the corn trade, the medial price of the several kinds of grain in the principal corn markets. 

  • Proportional or equitable distribution of financial expense. 

median

adj
  • Having the median as its value. 

  • Situated in a middle, central, or intermediate part, section, or range of (something). 

  • In the middle of an organ, structure etc.; towards the median plane of an organ or limb. 

noun
  • A number separating the higher half from the lower half of a data sample, population, or probability distribution. The median of a finite list of numbers can be found by arranging all the observations from lowest value to highest value and picking the middle one (e.g., the median of {3, 3, 5, 9, 11} is 5). If there is an even number of observations, then there is no single middle value; the median is then usually defined to be the mean of the two middle values. 

  • A line segment joining the vertex of triangle to the midpoint of the opposing side. 

  • The area separating two lanes of opposite-direction traffic; the median strip. 

How often have the words average and median occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )