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Figure 2. Box-plot with whiskers from minimum to maximum Figure 3. Same box-plot with whiskers drawn within the 1.5 IQR value. A boxplot is a standardized way of displaying the dataset based on the five-number summary: the minimum, the maximum, the sample median, and the first and third quartiles.
The sample maximum and minimum are the least robust statistics: they are maximally sensitive to outliers.. This can either be an advantage or a drawback: if extreme values are real (not measurement errors), and of real consequence, as in applications of extreme value theory such as building dikes or financial loss, then outliers (as reflected in sample extrema) are important.
Box-and-whisker plot with four mild outliers and one extreme outlier. In this chart, outliers are defined as mild above Q3 + 1.5 IQR and extreme above Q3 + 3 IQR. The interquartile range is often used to find outliers in data. Outliers here are defined as observations that fall below Q1 − 1.5 IQR or above Q3 + 1.5 IQR.
The observation in the box indicates the median, or the most central observation which is also a robust statistic to measure centrality. The "whiskers" of the boxplot are the vertical lines of the plot extending from the box and indicating the maximum envelope of the dataset except the outliers.
The fences define a "range" outside which an outlier exists; a way to picture this is a boundary of a fence. It is common for the lower and upper fences along with the outliers to be represented by a boxplot. For the boxplot shown on the right, only the vertical heights correspond to the visualized data set while horizontal width of the box is ...
[2] Grubbs's test detects one outlier at a time. This outlier is expunged from the dataset and the test is iterated until no outliers are detected. However, multiple iterations change the probabilities of detection, and the test should not be used for sample sizes of six or fewer since it frequently tags most of the points as outliers. [3]
Moreover, the MAD is a robust statistic, being more resilient to outliers in a data set than the standard deviation. In the standard deviation, the distances from the mean are squared, so large deviations are weighted more heavily, and thus outliers can heavily influence it. In the MAD, the deviations of a small number of outliers are irrelevant.
L-estimators are often much more robust than maximally efficient conventional methods – the median is maximally statistically resistant, having a 50% breakdown point, and the X% trimmed mid-range has an X% breakdown point, while the sample mean (which is maximally efficient) is minimally robust, breaking down for a single outlier.