---
title: Median
type: snippet
language: python
tags: [math]
cover: little-bird
dateModified: 2020-11-02T19:28:27+02:00
---

Finds the median of a list of numbers.

- Sort the numbers of the list using `list.sort()`.
- Find the median, which is either the middle element of the list if the list length is odd or the average of the two middle elements if the list length is even.
- [`statistics.median()`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/statistics.html#statistics.median) provides similar functionality to this snippet.

```py
def median(list):
  list.sort()
  list_length = len(list)
  if list_length % 2 == 0:
    return (list[int(list_length / 2) - 1] + list[int(list_length / 2)]) / 2
  return float(list[int(list_length / 2)])
```

```py
median([1, 2, 3]) # 2.0
median([1, 2, 3, 4]) # 2.5
```