Canadian Health Information Management Association Exam 2025 – 400 Free Practice Questions to Pass the Exam

The median is a measure of central tendency, which indicates the middle value of a dataset when it is sorted in ascending or descending order. It provides insight into the typical value around which other data points cluster but does not describe how spread out or variable the data points are within that dataset.

In contrast, the range, standard deviation, and variance are all measures of variability. The range simply identifies the difference between the highest and lowest values in a dataset. Standard deviation quantifies the amount of variation or dispersion from the average; a low standard deviation indicates that data points tend to be close to the mean, while a high standard deviation indicates that the data points are spread out over a wider range of values. Variance is mathematically related to standard deviation and represents the average of the squared differences from the mean, providing another way to assess data spread.

Thus, the median's role as a central tendency statistic distinguishes it from measures of variability, reinforcing that it does not provide information about the spread of data points in a dataset.