THE FIVE POINT SUMMARY and BOX PLOTS

FIVE POINT SUMMARY
More detailed than reporting only median, but less detailed than showing a histogram or stem & leaf diagram, is the FIVE NUMBER SUMMARY:
Smallest First Quartile Median Third Quartile Largest
EXAMPLE
  The data (artificial), 51 Numbers
     59    7  292  784  986  676  182  897    9  343  650  663  501
    869  208   47  689   19   12  282  431  716  956   37  477  312
     77   53  118   90  104  323  420   97   15  397  812  375  365
    854  586   83  149  235  165  226  465  743  157  757  624

The same numbers in order with the quartiles starred:
      7    9   12   15   19   37   47   53   59   77   83   90   97*
    104  118  149  157  165  182  208  226  235  282  292  312  323*
    343  365  375  397  420  431  465  477  501  586  624  650  663*
    676  689  716  743  757  784  812  854  869  897  956  986 

The five number summary 
      Smallest   First Quartile   Median   3-rd Quartile  Largest
         7            97            323        663         986

BOX PLOT
This plot of a five point summary is a BOX PLOT. 


000    100    200    300    400    500    600    700    800    900    1000
      .-----------------------------------------.
 -----|                  |                      |----------------------
      `-----------------------------------------'
The whiskers extend out to the least and largest numbers.
The vertical lines mark the quartiles, so the box holds 1/2 of the material.

There are further bells and whistles to the basic box plot idea:
  1. In the full definition of box plot, whiskers are not extended to cover data extremely far from the box, instead, far out data are marked with individual dots. For details see
    http://davidmlane.com/hyperstat/A37797.html
    http://stat.tamu.edu/stat30x/notes/node31.html
  2. Sometimes a plus sign is put in the box to show the mean.

Practice:   Haphazardly write 15 numbers. Construct five point summary and box plot.