Statistics Definitions > Midrange
What is the Midrange?
The midrange is a type of average, or mean. For example, “midrange” electronic gadgets are in the middle-price bracket: not cheap, but not expensive, either.
The formula to find the midrange = (high + low) / 2.
Example problem: Current cell phone prices in a mobile phone store range from $40 (the cheapest) to $550 (the most expensive). Find the midrange.
- Step 1: Add the lowest value to the highest: $550 + $40 = $590.
- Step 2: Divide Step 1 by two: $590 / 2 = $295.
The mid priced phones would be priced at around $295.
Difference Between a Midrange and a Range.
The range is a measure of spread. In the cell phone example, the range would be: $550 – $40 = $510. The range can also mean the entire spread of numbers—for example, it could be written as $40 to $550. The mid-range takes it a step further and divides the range by two to find a type of average.
Difference Between a Midrange and the Interquartile Range.
Don’t confuse the midrange with the interquartile range (IQR), sometimes called the “middle fifty“. They actually mean very different things. The mid-range is a type of mean, while the interquartile range is talking about a chunk of data in the middle of a data set.
For example, when the weather service reports that a “mean daily temperature” is 77 degrees, they are talking about the mid-range. They got that number by taking the sum of the high daily temperature and the low daily temperature and dividing by 2. Let’s say the recorded daily temperatures were:
55, 65, 67, 69, 70, 80, 81, 87, 90
High = 90
Low = 55
Mid = (90 + 55) / 2 = 154 / 2 = 77.
The IQR for this data set is the 25th percentile subtracted from the 75th percentile:
25th Percentile: 66
75th Percentile: 84
Interquartile Range: 84 – 66 = 18
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