📏 Median Absolute Deviation Calculator
Enter your data values to find the median absolute deviation (MAD), a robust way to measure how spread out your data is.
What this calculator does
The median absolute deviation (MAD) measures how spread out a dataset is, similar to standard deviation, but it is far less sensitive to extreme outliers because it relies on medians rather than means and squared differences.
How the calculation works
The calculator first finds the median of your data. Then it finds the absolute difference between each value and that median. The median of those absolute differences is the MAD. Multiplying the MAD by 1.4826 (a constant derived from the normal distribution) gives a scaled estimate that is comparable to the standard deviation for roughly normal data.
Because MAD is based on medians at every step, a single extreme value has much less influence on it than it would on a standard deviation calculation. This tool is for general and educational statistical use.