Contents

# Definition

An outlier is a data point or observation whose value is quite different from the others in the dataset being analyzed.1

It is an important part of the analysis to identify outliers and to use appropriate techniques to take them into account. But unfortunately 😔

There is no absolute agreement among statisticians about how to define outliers […]1

So what can be done? Fortunately 😏

Various rules of thumb have been developed to make the identification of outliers more consistent.1

One common definition uses the concept of interquartile range (IQR).

# IQR

The interquartile range [IQR] is the range of the middle 50% of the values in a data set, which is calculated as the difference between the 75th [upper quartile Q3] and 25th percentile [lower quartile Q1] values.1

And now how to use IQR to identify and remove outliers—filter values?

# Using IQR to find outliers

[…] mild outliers are those lower than the 25th quartile [Q1] minus 1.5 x IQR or greater than the 75th quartile [Q3] plus 1.5 x IQR. 1

And about the rationale

Cases this extreme are expected in about 1 in 150 observations in normally distributed data.1

On other example of the common usage of the 1.5 factor is that it is generally taken as the default value in box plot implementations like in matplotlib , the python main plotting library.

whis : float, sequence, or string (default = 1.5) As a float, determines the reach of the whiskers to the beyond the first and third quartiles. In other words, where IQR is the interquartile range (Q3-Q1), the upper whisker will extend to last datum less than Q3 + whis x IQR).[^2]

A last word to say that this 1.5 factor can be substituted by higher values.

3 x IQR […] are expected about once per 425 000 observations in a normally distributed data.1

# In Python

Great, but how to use it in Python + Pandas to filter values in a dataset ? Here is a simple solution taken from a quite popular answer I made on Stack Overflow.

## 1. Producing some test data

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
%matplotlib inline

# Some test data
np.random.seed(33454)
df = (
# A standard distribution
pd.DataFrame({'nb': np.random.randint(0, 100, 20)})
# Adding some outliers
.append(pd.DataFrame({'nb': np.random.randint(100, 200, 2)}))
# Reseting the index
.reset_index(drop=True)
)


## 2. Computing IQR

Q1 = df['nb'].quantile(0.25)
Q3 = df['nb'].quantile(0.75)
IQR = Q3 - Q1


## 3. Filtering data

It makes use of the pandas query method for clarity.

#Values between Q1-1.5IQR and Q3+1.5IQR
filtered = df.query('(@Q1 - 1.5 * @IQR) <= nb <= (@Q3 + 1.5 * @IQR)')


## 4. Plotting the result to check the difference

df.join(filtered, rsuffix='_filtered').boxplot()


Note: SciPy proposes an implementation of the IQR computing scipy.stats.iqr.

# Conclusion

Outliers identification based on IQR is a useful technique simple and generally accepted. So it can be used at least as a first tool during exploratory analysis.

1. Sarah Boslaugh, Statistics in a Nutshell (O’Reilly, 2012) ↩︎