[R] need help

[Jim Lemon]

Weiwei Shi wrote:
> Hi, there:
> I think i need to re-phrase my question since last time I did not get
> any reply but i think the question is not that hard, probably i did
> not make the question clear:
> 
> I want to find cases like
> 35, 90, 330, 330, 335
> 
> from the rest which look like
> 3, 3, 3, 3.2, 3.3
> 4, 4.4, 4.5, 4.6, 4.7
> ....
> 
> basically there is one (or more) big 'gap' in the case i seek. 
> 
Hi Weiwei,

I think your method of defining a central value for the large proportion 
of values and then setting a criterion for outliers is valid (or at 
least as valid as many other ways of defining outliers). However, here 
is a different method, sorting the vector of values and then looking for 
a "gap" with a specified multiple (gap.prop) of the mean differences 
between the smaller values. It returns the first value after the "gap" 
(easily changed to all the values after). To account for vectors that 
have negative values the minimum value is subtracted when calculating 
"newx" and then added to the result. For your data, a gap.prop of 20 
works, but the default value of 10 doesn't. It also won't work where 
large values are typical and small ones are the outliers (well, it will 
indicate where the "gap" is).

Jim
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