Briefle words · Data & charts
Outlier
A value far from the rest of the data, which can distort averages and should be shown or explained rather than hidden.
Say it to an AI
Show the relationship between September ad spend and signups across ten cities. Use a scatter plot, spend on x and signups on y, each dot labeled by city; mark the outlier Cork in a contrasting color so the correlation and the exception both read at once.
How an expert would brief the stronger version of “Ad spend vs. signups”.
See it
Try it as a puzzle →City-level marketing review in the growth dashboard of a bike-sharing operator.
Why: Cork, with $6.8k spend and 310 signups, sits well under the diagonal in B and is colored orange; in A nothing singles it out.
Related words
Room 2 · Choosing the chart
Learn “Outlier” in a five-minute lesson