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Message: <blockquote data-quote="lkj" data-source="post: 7200276" data-attributes="member: 18646">I'm going to hate myself for stepping into this-- But removing outliers needs to be justified. Selective removal of outliers is precisely the kind of manipulation that can lead to incorrect statistical representations. Yes, sometimes it is ok to remove outliers-- often there is technical and even statistical justification for it.  However, one does not simply automatically remove any values that fall in the tails.In the case of 12 individuals with 1 short and 11 tall, the real problem is you almost certainly don't have enough samples to form a statistically valid representation of your population. Because, chances are, it isn't inherently normally distributed. Or, you just got a wonky sample. Averages are great. They are lovely. But they are a tool like any other and their use needs to be examined in the context of the data.And anyway, that particular contrived example can be easily modified to make the point better.  Imagine a population of 100. 50 are 6 feet tall. 50 are 2 feet tall. The average is 4 ft tall. But the average is not an adequate representation of your data. In fact, no one in your population is 4ft tall. In that case, if you simply presented the average, you wouldn't be providing a useful statistical representation of your data.  In fact, by itself, it would be a misrepresentation. Disclaimer: I have made no examination of the data in this case. I have no idea whether using the average is justified. Just don't have the time to go through it. But I couldn't help myself responding to the general idea that averages are always a good representation. AD</blockquote>

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