Outliers

Definition

Outliers are data points that significantly deviate from the overall pattern or trend of a dataset. They can skew statistical analyses and affect the accuracy of results.

Analogy

Imagine you're at a party where everyone is wearing casual clothes except for one person who shows up in formal attire. That person would be considered an outlier because they stand out from the rest of the group.

Related terms

Mean Absolute Deviation (MAD): MAD measures how spread out data points are around the mean value. Outliers can greatly impact MAD.

Box-and-Whisker Plot: This graphical representation displays key statistics such as median, quartiles, and outliers in a dataset.

Data Cleaning: The process of identifying and handling outliers is part of data cleaning, which involves removing or correcting errors or inconsistencies in datasets before analysis.