Do not over-think about ‘outliers’, use a student-t distribution instead

A Bayesian approach using R and Brms

For many researchers, outliers are rogue waves that can dramatically alter the course of the analysis or “confound” some expected effects. I prefer to use the term “extreme observations” and leave the term outlier for observations that are not truly part of the population being studied. For example, in my field (brain ischemia research), an outlier is an animal that does not have ischemia (when it should have), while extreme observations are animals …

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