On 18/07/2012 10:14 AM, Bert Gunter wrote:
checkforoutliers <- function(series)NULL

Cheers,
Bert

*Explanation: There is no such thing as a statistical outlier -- or,
rather,"outlier" is a fraudulent statistical concept, defined arbitrarily
and without scientific legitimacy. The typical unstated purpose of such
identification is to remove contaminating or irrelevant data, but such a
judgment can only be made by a subject matter expert with knowledge of the
context and, usually, the specific cause for the unusual data. Do not be
misled by the large body of statistical literature on this topic into
believing that statistical analysis alone can provide objective criteria to
do this. That is a path to scientific purgatory.

For the record:
1. I am a statistician
2. Lots of highly knowledgeable, smart statisticians will condemn what I
have just said as stupid ranting.

The perils of a mailing list.

I think you are assuming that Sajeeka will handle the outliers incorrectly. It happens often enough, but I don't think it's polite to make that assumption.

My answer to the question would have been to ask the question, "how do you define outliers?" Certainly it's possible to define outliers in the context of a model, and their presence is an indication of problems with the model. The correct response might be to weaken the assumptions of your model and use a robust procedure as Michael suggested (which might mean throwing away the outliers), or it might be to change the model in some other way. Your advice to consult a subject matter expert is good, but in my experience, they often put more faith in their models than they should, so as a statistician, I think you should point out discrepancies like outliers. Which means it's good to have a function to detect them.

Duncan Murdoch


-- Bert

On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 6:27 AM, Sajeeka Nanayakkara <nsaje...@yahoo.com>wrote:

>
>
>
>
>  What is the R code to check whether data series have outliers or not?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Sajeeka Nanayakkara
>         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
>
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