Five Robust Indicators of Central Value

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Abstract
The presence of outliers and the statistical noise that affects the data for reference materials have undesirable effects on the mean and on other indicators of the central value. Five robust indicators of the central value, which are resistant to obvious outliers and less obvious contamination (spurious data), were investigated: the dominant cluster mode, the modian, the Gastwirth median, the trimean, and the trimmed mean. The mean and the median were investigated for purposes of comparison.The results confirm that the mean is very unreliable, and that the Gastwirth median and the dominant cluster mode are strong indicators of the central value.