We had 26 submissions for the March caption contest that featured a cartoon showing a classroom situation with a clown sitting in the front row amongst many regular students. A scatterplot is displayed on the screen with a positive relationship amongst most points but a single outlier in the upper left of the plot.
The winning caption for the March contest was "Points that differ from their peers are often the most interesting," written by Jim Alloway from EMSQ Associates. Jim's caption can be a nice vehicle to discuss how interesting discoveries are often made by investigating outliers.
Three captions on the effect of outliers that received honorable mentions included "Stop Clowning Around! One outlier doth not a negative correlation make!," written by Joe Nolan from Northern Kentucky University, "Outliers can make a circus out of your regression analysis," written by Charlie Smith from NC State University, and "There's always that funny outlier clownin' around!", written by Tianyi Wang a student at Strath Haven High School.