How do you find a median of 0?

Answer 1

I will rephrase the problem- Are there situations where we would expect the median value to be zero or close to zero? In quality control cases, the important attribute is the error, which are the measurement minus the specified condition. In these cases, where there are minor errors, it is likely that the median will be zero, particularly if my quality control is good. For example, suppose I must keep a water vessel exactly at 50 degrees and I have an electronic readout of temperature. If the vessel goes below 50, I turn up the heat, and above 50, I turn the heat down. The median of the errors is likely to be close to zero. Also, if I take a large set of data that's fairly random in nature (let's say 100 measured heights of people), calculate the average of all values, then create new values by subtracting from each value the average of the data, the new values will likely have median close to zero.