Which measure of central tendency should be used when there is an outlier?
1 Answer
Sep 22, 2017
The median is less affected by outliers than the mean.
Explanation:
The median is less affected by outliers than the mean.
Let's take this first dataset with no outliers as an example:
20, 24, 26, 26, 26, 27, 29
The mean is 25.43 and the median is 26. The mean and median are relatively similar.
In this second dataset with an outlier, there's more of a difference:
1, 24, 26, 26, 26, 27, 29
The mean is 22.71 and the median is 26. The median is not affected at all by the outlier in this example.
Please see these related Socratic questions for more information:
How do outliers affect measure of central tendency?
Which measure of central tendency is most affected if an outlier is present?
