[R] Removing Outliers Function

[David Winsemius]

On Feb 9, 2011, at 1:25 PM, kirtau wrote:

>
> I have two questions,
>
> 1) if the solutions is only three or four lines of code is there  
> anyway you
> can share those lines instead of stating that the solution is easy and
> providing no code. I prefer not to use an R-Package but have a "raw
> function".
>
> 2) Can you explain why you feel that this is "statistical malpractice"

You are proposing to systematically distort your data (apparently  
without even examining it)  before conducting an inferential process.  
The old FLA GIGO is operative here. The data arose from some process  
in nature and the outliers are just as important as the inliers. If  
you want methods that are robust to "outliers" you should look at the  
Robust Statistics Task View:
http://cran.r-project.org/web/views/Robust.html

-- 
David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT