Median salary without using a library

Question

A salary benchmarking sheet has a few very large outliers, so the mean is misleading. You need the median instead — and the interviewer wants it implemented by hand.

Write a function `median(values)` that returns the median of a list of numbers as a float, **without** importing `statistics` or `num

Accepted Answer

Step 1: Handle the empty list up front — there is no middle value to return. Step 2: `sorted(values)` returns a **new** sorted list, so the caller's data is not mutated. `values.sort()` would modify it in place, which is a common interview trap. Step 3: `mid = n // 2` uses integer division to find the middle index. Step 4: For an odd count the single middle element is the median; cast to `float` so the return type is consistent. Step 5: For an even count, average the two central elements. `/` always produces a float in Python 3.

Median salary without using a library

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