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
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
You need (2^e)+m+1 bits. That is more bits than would fit in the cheap machine integer type you just have lying around, but it's not that many in real terms.
Let's do a tiny one to see though first, the "half-precision" or f16 type, 5 bits of exponent, 10 bits of fraction, 1 sign bit. We need 43 bits. This will actually fit in the 64-bit signed integer type on a modern CPU.
Now lets try f64, the big daddy, 11 exponent, 52 fraction, 1 sign bit so total 2048 + 52 + 1 = 2101 bits. As I said it doesn't fit in our machine integer types but it's much smaller than a kilobyte of RAM.
Edited: I can't count, though it doesn't make a huge difference.