To be pedantic, median is cheaper than sorting. O(n) with a quicksort-like algorithm.

Also, if you're taking an average of floating point numbers, you might want to sort it first and add from smallest to largest, to better preserve precision

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lscharen 3 hours ago | parent [-]

An aside, but I recently learned -- if one is willing to use a very modest amount of memory -- summing floating-point numbers with no loss of precision is effectively a solved problem with the XSUM algorithm.

https://glizen.com/radfordneal/ftp/xsum.pdf

	▲	tialaramex 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That paper explains some useful optimisation details, but obviously since the floats are all (either infinity or) some multiple of a known tiny fraction (their smallest non-zero number), we can definitely sum them accurately.