Simple way to calculate median with MySQL

Question

What\'s the simplest (and hopefully not too slow) way to calculate the median with MySQL? I\'ve used AVG(x) for finding the mean, but I\'m having a hard time fi

Answer 1

Building off of velcro's answer, for those of you having to do a median off of something that is grouped by another parameter:

SELECT grp_field, t1.val FROM (
   SELECT grp_field, @rownum:=IF(@s = grp_field, @rownum + 1, 0) AS row_number,
   @s:=IF(@s = grp_field, @s, grp_field) AS sec, d.val
  FROM data d,  (SELECT @rownum:=0, @s:=0) r
  ORDER BY grp_field, d.val
) as t1 JOIN (
  SELECT grp_field, count(*) as total_rows
  FROM data d
  GROUP BY grp_field
) as t2
ON t1.grp_field = t2.grp_field
WHERE t1.row_number=floor(total_rows/2)+1;