Comparison With Mean and Median
The Interquartile Mean shares some properties from both the mean as well as the median:
- Like the median, the IQM is insensitive to outliers; in the example given, the highest value (38) was an obvious outlier of the dataset, but its value is not used in the calculation of the IQM. On the other hand, the common average (the arithmetic mean) is sensitive to these outliers: xmean = 8.5.
- Like the mean, the IQM is a discrete parameter, based on a large number of observations from the dataset. The median is always equal to one of the observations in the dataset (assuming an odd number of observations). The mean can be equal to any value between the lowest and highest observation, depending on the value of all the other observations. The IQM can be equal to any value between the first and third quartiles, depending on all the observations in the interquartile range.
Read more about this topic: Interquartile Mean
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