How do I calculate the “median of five” in C#?

Question

The median of five is sometimes used as an exercise in algorithm design and is known to be computable using only 6 comparisons.

What is the best way

Answer 1

This is pretty ugly and could use some refactoring, but it explicitly walks through all the comparisons and swaps so you can see what's going on.

public double medianOfFive(double a, double b, double c, double d, double e){
    double median;
    // sort a and b
    if(a > b) // comparison # 1
    {
        double temp = a;
        a = b;
        b = temp;
    }

    // sort c and d
    if(c > d)  // comparison # 2
    {
        double temp = c;
        c = d;
        d = temp;
    }

    // replace the lower of a and c with e
    // because the lowest of the first four cannot be the median
    if(a < c) // comparison # 3
    {
        a = e;
        // re-sort a and b
        if(a > b) // comparison # 4
        {
            double temp = a;
            a = b;
            b = temp;
        }
    }
    else
    {
        c = e;
        // re-sort c and d
        if(c > d)  // comparison # 4
        {
            double temp = c;
            c = d;
            d = temp;
        }
    }

    // eliminate a or c, because the lowest
    // of the remaining four can't be the median either
    if(a < c) // comparison #5
    {
         if(b < c) // comparison #6
         {
              median = c;
         }
         else
         {
              median = b;
         }
    }
    else
    {
         if(d < a) // comparison #6
         {
              median = a;
         }
         else
         {
              median = d;
         }
    }
    return median;
}