In a set of four simple reaction times ($200$, $250$, $280$, and $250$ milliseconds), the mean is $245$ milliseconds. If one extreme outlier score of $5,000$ milliseconds is added, the mean rises to $1,445$ milliseconds. This resulting mean is greater than $80$% of the scores and fails to represent the typical behavior in the distribution, demonstrating why researchers prefer the median for highly skewed distributions.