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detection of outliers

Bert Gunter 
Not to oversimplify ...

1. (At least) dozens of books and thousands of papers have been written on
this...

2. Most important question is: What is an outlier? (Many smart folks says
that the concept is illogical/flawed -- there is no mystical boundary that
one crosses to become a statistical pariah; many other smart folks
disagree).

3. Equivalently: What is the model with respect to which values are
outlying? (with apologies to Winston Churchill's: "That is an indignity up
with which I will not put.")

So good advice here is: Beware of good advice about this. (Of course, I may
just be an outlier ...)

;)

Cheers,

-- Bert Gunter
Genentech Non-Clinical Statistics
South San Francisco, CA
 
"The business of the statistician is to catalyze the scientific learning
process."  - George E. P. Box

Thread (5 messages)

Phguardiol@aol.com detection of outliers Sep 23 Gabor Grothendieck detection of outliers Sep 23 Dimitris Rizopoulos detection of outliers Sep 23 Christian Hennig detection of outliers Sep 23 Bert Gunter detection of outliers Sep 23