Outliers
Definition
Outliers are extreme values that significantly differ from other values in a dataset. They can greatly affect statistical analyses and should be carefully examined.
Analogy
Imagine you're at a party with friends who are all around 5 feet tall, but suddenly someone walks in who's 7 feet tall. That person would be considered an outlier among your group.
Related terms
Quartiles: Quartiles divide data into four equal parts and can help identify outliers using interquartile range.
Boxplot: A boxplot is a graphical representation of data that shows outliers as individual points outside the main distribution.
Z-Score: A z-score measures how many standard deviations an observation is from the mean and can help identify outliers.
"Outliers" appears in:
Subjects (2)
Study guides (5)
AP Statistics - 2.4 Representing the Relationship Between Two Quantitative Variables
AP Statistics - 2.5 Correlation
AP Statistics - 2.9 Analyzing Departures from Linearity
AP Statistics - 7.8 Setting Up a Test for the Difference of Two Population Means
AP Statistics - 9.4 Setting Up a Test for the Slope of a Regression Model
Additional resources (3)
Practice Questions (7)
- What are outliers in a scatterplot?
- How do clusters and outliers affect the interpretation of a scatterplot?
- What are outliers in a dataset?
- How can outliers impact statistical measures in a dataset?
- How can you identify outliers in a dataset?
- Which method can be used to identify outliers by calculating the upper and lower bounds based on the IQR?
- Which measure is used to identify outliers in a box plot?
Resources
© 2024 Fiveable Inc. All rights reserved.
AP® and SAT® are trademarks registered by the College Board, which is not affiliated with, and does not endorse this website.