Median average in pivot table

Factual Questions
1

Does anyone know if it possible to get a median average shown in the data items section of a pivot table in Excel 2003?

I’m looking at financial data for a bunch of firms and a few outliers are severely skewing the mean average.

Thanks.

2

I do not know what a median average is. Can you define the term?

3

Assuming you meant the median, I don’t think it’s one of the available custom subtotals in a pivot table. However, you can easily apply the median function to a set of numbers inside a pivot table.

4

It is when all of the figures to be averaged are ranked by magnitude, the middle number (or the mean of the two middle numbers) is the median.

Eg. for 1, 2, 3, 4, 100 the median is 3 (while the mean is 22).
http://www.investorwords.com/3030/median.html

What else would I have meant? :wink:

In the end I did do it manually. Given the amount of different averages I had to calculate it took a lot longer than if the pivot table could have calculated it automatically. So if anyone knows if it’s possible it would still help me a lot in future.

Thanks.

5

Be careful that blank values in your pivot table are not shown as 0 (zero). That could screw up your percentiles pretty badly.

6

The reference to “median” as “median average” appears only in more academic treatments of measures of central tendency. Among mean, median, and mode, “average” is usually a synonym for “mean,” and always so in popular usage. So using the expression “median average” on a general-purpose message board is bound to raise questions.

7

Okay. I just used the term I remember from school and university.