Socrates - Calculating the median of an array of numbers

gistfile1.rb

 Median of an array of numbers
def median(array)
  if array.length.even?
    return (array[((array.length / 2) - 1)].to_f + array[array.length / 2].to_f) / 2
  else
    return array[array.length / 2]
  end
end

array1 = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 7]
puts array1.inspect
puts "Median is " + median(array1).to_s

array2 = [4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7]
puts array2.inspect
puts "Median is " + median(array2).to_s

I'm confused about what " | element | " is able/allowed to do within the code block. I had tried to return "median_value" after the second "end," but no success.

|Element| is a single element of the array, if the array is made of numbers then each element will be a number, if it's a mixed array and the current Element is a string then it'll pass a string to the code block, of course you will get an error if you try to .to_f to a string.

In this case though you don't really need to iterate through the array, you are doing all this work to find the position of the ones that you want and you just need to return that 'median_value'. You are iterating through median value which is returning a 'median_value' calculation for each iteration. You just want one value based on the array.length.even? condition. Just return that. I hope that helped.

Your .each method will return an array when it is done iterating over all the elements.

Thanks so much for getting me back on track--out of the weeds!!