Question

A sports store sells ski wax. Here are the numbers of ski wax tubes sold each day for a week.

5, 7, 6, 5, 17, 5, 4
Outlier: 17
Mean with outlier: 7
Mean without outlier: 5.3 (Should I round this?)

Should the outlier be used to report the mean number of ski wax tubes sold in a week?

I don't know whether I should use the outlier, and I also do not know if I should round 5.3 (although it would only make sense to do that, I think)

Answer 1

Depends. If the 17 were sold on a day, like maybe Friday before the weekend ski races, when your wax sales go up every week in the spring then the mean including the outlier would be more meaningful than the squished average. If the first number is for Monday, then that 17 is on Friday.