Cartoon: The Outlier

A cartoon to be used for discussing how outliers can have an influential effect on statistics. The cartoon was used in the June 2016 CAUSE Cartoon Caption Contest. The winning caption was submitted by Albert Koenig, a student at Belgrade High School. The drawing was created by John Landers using an idea from Dennis Pearl. Other ideas for using this cartoon in teaching include focusing on assumptions (do we really know the team with the tallest player is ahead?); the selection of the best measure to summarize data (mean, median, or maximum in this case); or on the importance of variability in understanding data.