Follow-Ups to Answer from Expert Josh

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catherine wrote at 2006-11-13 22:24:46
instead of having such a confusing answer, an outlier is an unusually high or low ratings that lie away from other ratings.  

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Sam Huffman wrote at 2009-11-03 01:44:31
Sorry, but your wrong. I'm a 7th grader and an outlier can only be one number. i was looking for a helpful example for my project, and i was very disappointed with your... My question was can there be more than one outlier in a set of data

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Josh wrote at 2009-11-13 18:22:13
To Catherine:



Sure, the supplementary information is not for everyone.  People can pick and choose what they read. I stated up-front that "outliers refer to data points which do not conform to the overall trend. That is, observed values which are way smaller or larger than the bulk of the data are deemed to be outliers." Looking at the picture I gave, I have clearly indicated that points A, B and K may be treated as outliers. There are situations where the distinction is not as black and white. That's why I have included some formal criteria.



A__B_______________C_D_E__F__G_H___I_J_________________K



To Sam Huffman:



What you said is NOT true. We can find examples where there is only one outlier in the entire data set. This does not mean that there cannot be more than one outlier in a set of data (see figure above for instance).



I don't recall you asking me such a question. Please be fair.

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dogbreath wrote at 2012-05-15 00:52:46
Wow, you guys are fighting over a math problem. lol

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