Approximating the Normal Sample Median Distribution in Process Control

Abstract The present work aims to propose an approximation of the sample median distribution with a normal parent distribution. Although the mean is usually used as the central tendency measure for normal samples, the median has also been used in engineering, process control in particular. The proposed method approximates the normal sample median distribution only using the normal distribution function. It outperforms Castagliola’s method for small samples and serves as an alternative approximation for trading off accuracy against computational complexity for large samples.