Now if one knows the highest salary and the lowest salary, one would know the median salary.No you wouldn’t. That doesn’t make any sense. Suppose you had seven salaries that were:
1 - $25,000
2 - $30,000
3 - $50,000
4 - $55,000
5 - $80,000
6 - $90,000
7 - $100,000
The median salary there is $55,000. How do you get that from only the lowest (25,000) and highest (100,000) salaries?
Don’t worry about trying to answer that – the answer is you don’t get the median from only the highest and lowest values
…Each employee writes “Yes” or “No” on a piece of paper without divulging his name. The number of people above the amount is recorded. The question is then repeated with a higher amount…Nah. I won’t explain how it’s solved, but the concept behind this puzzle is not an uncommon one. A little Google searching and you can find similar examples (and the solutions) on sites that offer mathematical puzzles.