What Is An Outlier, Anyway?

What Is An Outlier, Anyway?



	Whenever someone approaches us at a gig, the following conversation usually ensues:

	*Person: Hey, you guys are really great. Blah blah, blah blah diddy blah...*

	*Outlier: Thank you.*

	*Person: What's the name of your band?*

	*Outlier: The Outliers.*

	*Person: The what?*

	*Outlier: The Outliers*

	*Person: The Outliners?*

	*Outlier: No, The Outliers.*

	*Person: What's an Outlier?*

	*Outlier: Well...*

	So, here's what an Outlier is (not that we want to appear too geeky, but):

	An Outlier is a statistical term. It refers to observations in a distribution of data that deviates so much from the other observations as to arouse suspicions that it was generated by a different mechanism, and therefore discarding of the observations might be considered. (Here's a graphical representation of what this means.)



	*So, how did we come to call ourselves The Outliers?*

	Well, we were sitting around after rehearsing one night trying to come up with a name for the band. We came up with all sorts of crazy things - The Logarythms 2, The Log Jam (which we actually used for a year or two), The Mississippi Log Jam, The Frogs (Four Rockin' Old Guys), Rubber Band. We just kept throwing names around, and having a miserable time doing it. As David once said, "You know, one of my least favorite pastimes is sitting around trying to name a band."

	Well, while all this was going on, Joel and Mark were working on a particularly tricky assignment for one of our financial services clients. We were working with Dr. Richard Columbo from Fordham University on, what else, developing a system to detect outliers in financial data. Mark was spending the better part of his days on this project, living, thinking and breathing - OUTLIERS! Finally, it hit them, why not just call ourselves The Outliers? It kind of fits (we thought in self-deprecating fashion) - none of us fit into what anyone normal would describe as a "normal" distribution, so why not?

	Of course, we never realized that everyone else (those people in the "normal" distribution) would have such a tough time understanding the name.

	Oh well, and so it goes...

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