Outliers Shape Our World

In the field of Data Analytics, outliers often bother us. Most data analysts are worried about the effect of outliers in the final outcome. We constantly look for Normal Data or in real-world normalcy. However, the irony is, these extreme values in the data, which is often termed as outliers, have shaped our World time and again.

If I look back at the 20th century, some of the major events like World War 1, the Great Depression, World War 2, had altered the course of the World. Now for this century, the financial crisis of 2007 and most recent 2020 are two such extreme points, that has and would change the way we live in this World - again the effects of outliers, the long tails in our curve.

Now, if I have to consider our lives, and I would urge everyone to think a bit on this point, it would once again be those not-so-normal situations, those extreme events, responsible for altering our lives altogether.

But as data analysts, we hope for normal data, we jump with joy to see that beautiful bell curve. The skewed data makes us jittery. We become worried about the hypothesis we farmed. We like to see our data falling in those comfortable 4 quartiles. Anything above or below, the extreme ends of the curve, those outliers in our data, and we would most likely to omit those from our analysis.

Then remember Outliers had and will shape our World always, every time without any variance or deviation.