Final answer:
The presence of an outlier in the data set does not affect the median, which is the middle value of the ordered data set. The median remains unchanged because the outlier does not alter the position of the middle numbers when the set is ordered.
Step-by-step explanation:
When examining the effect of an outlier on a data set, it's important to note that the median is less affected by outliers compared to the mean. In the given data set (101.2, 102.3, 101.8, 102.0, 101.9, 101.5, 102.3, 108.7, 1012, 102.0), there is a clear outlier which is the value 1012. This is much larger than the other values in the set.
However, the median, being the middle value of an ordered set, will remain unchanged as long as the outlier is not exactly at the median's position or does not change the ordered position of the median. For this data set, we would first need to order the data from smallest to largest. Since there are 10 values, the median would be the average of the 5th and 6th values in the ordered list.
Upon ordering, we discard the outlier for median calculation purposes since it does not change the relative positions of the middle numbers. Therefore, the presence of the outlier will have no effect on the calculation of the median for this set, as it would be the same with or without the outlier when the numbers are arranged in order.