similarly to how the median generalizes to the geometric median in multivariate data, a geometric mad can be constructed that generalizes the mad. given a 2 dimensional paired set of data "(x","y""), (x","y")..., "(x","y") and a suitably calculated geometric median formula_17, the geometric median absolute deviation is given by:formula_18this gives the identical result as the univariate mad in 1 dimension and extends easily to higher dimensions. in the case of complex values ("x"+i"y"), the relation of mad to the standard deviation is unchanged for normally distributed data.