One indicator of an outlier is that an observation is more than 2.5 standard deviations from the mean. Consider the data value 80. (a) If a data set has mean 70 and standard deviation 5, is 80 a suspect outlier? Solution Given mean=70, s=5 (X-mean)/s =(80-70)/5 =2 Since 2 is not more than 2.5 standard deviations from the mean, 80 is not a suspect outlier.