Practice question · Multiple choice
One data point sits far off an otherwise perfect straight-line trend. The honest first move is to…
Hints
- An outlier is a question, not an answer: transcription slip? equipment hiccup? or real physics?
- History warning: the ozone hole hid for years inside data flagged as outliers.
Show the answer
D. Check the notebook and, if possible, re-measure it
Why
Outliers get investigated, never silently deleted or "adjusted". Most are mundane mistakes traceable in the notebook; occasionally one is a discovery. Either way, the decision and its reason belong in the report, that audit trail is scientific integrity.
Practise Graphical Analysis and Curve Fitting
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