[pvillano]

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

[lscharen]

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]

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.

[hinkley]

That’s great for mean, but you don’t need to sort for mean.