Abstract
Observations that depart considerably from the center of a distribution demand special consideration. They may be retained, trimmed, or weighted less than other data. This article provides a BASIC program that implements Mosteller and Tukey’s (1977) technique for weighting observations less as they depart from the middle of a distribution. Influence curves for this “bisquare-weighted mean,” or “bimean,” are displayed and compared with more traditional measures of central tendency.
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This research was supported by Grant R01 MH39496 from NIMH. The author appreciates the helpful comments of E. Lindholm, S. Parkinson, and the journal reviewers.
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Killeen, P.R. The bimean: A measure of central tendency that accommodates outliers. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers 17, 526–528 (1985). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03207646
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03207646