4.4.1 Highlighting Outliers

Percentiles

This option highlights values above or below a given percentile. For instance, you may choose to highlight, in each column, the metric values equal or above the 95th percentile for the respective metric. This highlights the top 5% metric values in each column.

You pick the percentile you wish to highlight from the top of the highlight dropdown menu in the control panel. If you choose a percentile above the median (50th percentile), all values above that percentile are highlighted. If you choose a percentile below the median, the values below that percentile are highlighted.

SDMetrics calculates percentiles using the empirical distribution function with averages. The list of percentiles in the dropdown menu is configurable, see Section 4.16.2 "Percentiles".

Distance from the mean

This option highlights metric values with a certain distance from the mean value of the metric. The distance is expressed in multiples of the metric's standard deviation. For example, you may choose to highlight metric values larger than the mean plus four times the standard deviation of the metric. Simply select the appropriate multiple from the highlight dropdown menu.

"Distance from the mean" is meaningful for metrics defined on an interval or ratio scale. "Percentiles" are meaningful for all ordinal scale metrics.

To remove any highlighting from the table, choose the first entry "nothing" from the highlight dropdown menu.