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Example of the Mean's Sensitivity to Outliers
Consider a dataset of four reaction times: , , , and milliseconds (ms), which has a mean of ms. If an outlier score of ms is added—perhaps due to participant inattention—the mean drastically increases to ms. This new mean is larger than of the scores in the dataset, demonstrating how a single extreme outlier can pull the mean so far that it no longer accurately represents the typical behavior in the distribution.
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Research Methods in Psychology - 4th American Edition @ KPU
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Example of the Mean's Sensitivity to Outliers
In a highly skewed distribution, how does the presence of extreme scores typically affect the mean?
In a distribution of reaction times, the mean will typically be more significantly shifted by the presence of a few extreme outliers than the median will.