
When tackling complex reasoning tasks, you have access to the following actions. Use them as needed to progress through your thought process.

[ASSESS]

[ADVANCE]

[VERIFY]

[SIMPLIFY]

[SYNTHESIZE]

[PIVOT]

[OUTPUT]

You should strictly follow the format below:

[ACTION NAME]

# Your action step 1

# Your action step 2

# Your action step 3

...

Next action: [NEXT ACTION NAME]


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The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has designated March 14th as "International Mathematics Day" each year. A ninth-grade school conducted a reading activity with the theme of "Mathematics Culture" in March, and randomly sampled some students to read articles related to the activity.  
Data collected:  
$15, 12, 15, 13, 15, 15, 12, 18, 13, 18, 18, 15, 13, 15, 12, 15, 13, 15, 18, 18$;  
Organized data:  

| Number of Articles Read | 12 | 13 | 15 | 18 |
|-------------------------|----|----|----|----|
| Number of Students      | 3  | m  | 8  | 5  |

Please answer the following questions based on the provided information:  
$(1)$ Write down the value of $m$ directly and the median number of articles read by students.  
$(2)$ Find the average number of articles read by students in this survey.  
$(3)$ If there are approximately 300 students in the ninth grade, estimate how many articles the ninth-grade students in the school read about "Mathematics Culture"?

Present the answer in LaTex format: \boxed{Your answer}
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