OUTLIER

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does outlier mean? 

• OUTLIER (noun)
  The noun OUTLIER has 2 senses:

1. a person who lives away from his place of work

2. an extreme deviation from the mean

  Familiarity information: OUTLIER used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• OUTLIER (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A person who lives away from his place of work

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Hypernyms ("outlier" is a kind of...):

occupant; occupier; resident (someone who lives at a particular place for a prolonged period or who was born there)

Sense 2

Meaning:

An extreme deviation from the mean

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Hypernyms ("outlier" is a kind of...):

deviation (the difference between an observed value and the expected value of a variable or function)

Domain category:

statistics (a branch of applied mathematics concerned with the collection and interpretation of quantitative data and the use of probability theory to estimate population parameters)

 Context examples 

However, astronomers have discovered some mysterious outliers.

(Mystery orbits in outermost reaches of solar system not caused by ‘Planet Nine’, University of Cambridge)

“Inevitably, we expect to find outliers to the current trends as well as measurements of other chemicals.”

(Water common – yet scarce – in exoplanets, University of Cambridge)

One outlier from the predicted shape model is the size of the large boulder near Bennu’s south pole.

(NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft Discovers Water on Asteroid, NASA)

Although the new model adequately described many ultrahot Jupiters on the books, some outliers do remain, suggesting that additional aspects of these worlds' atmospheres still need to be understood.

(Water Is Destroyed, Then Reborn in Ultrahot Jupiters, NASA/JPL)

Additionally, some patients have variant forms, where there are features associated with both autoimmune hepatitis and another type of chronic liver disease (overlap syndromes) or where there are findings incompatible with autoimmune hepatitis (outlier syndromes).

(Autoimmune Hepatitis, NLM, Medical Subject Headings)

Now, a study led by Emily Rivest of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science synthesizes the results of these behavioral studies—revealing both broad patterns and intriguing outliers—and provides a conceptual framework to help guide future research in this emerging field.

(Study considers sensory impacts of environmental change on ocean species, National Science Foundation)

Feet from the raw bars and seashell-colored condominiums of Florida's Cedar Key, NSF-supported researchers at the Florida Museum of Natural History and California State University discovered a new species of sea slug that is a rare outlier in a group famous for being ultra-vegetarians.

(New sea slug species discovered near condominiums of Florida’s Cedar Key, National Science Foundation)

In the process, they were able to identify ranges in the disc’s mass, its ‘roundness’ (or eccentricity), and forced gradual shifts in its orientations (or precession rate), which faithfully reproduced the outlier TNO orbits.

(Mystery orbits in outermost reaches of solar system not caused by ‘Planet Nine’, University of Cambridge)