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Federico Rossi wrote, about averaging an odd number of observations-

>The explanation I've found for this recommendation is that this way you
>can consider the central value of the odd series (i.e. the so called
>median) which is definitely less affected by abnormal values than the
>average value.

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Selecting a median that way seems to be an alternative to averaging. It's a
rather extreme case of discarding outliers, in that it discards EVERYTHING
but the one median observation.

I can see that it might be usable (if not ideal) for dealing with a
quantity that fluctuates in a random manner. But I don't see how you would
apply that technique to a quantity that was changing systematically, in the
way that observed altitudes change rather steadily with time (either
increasing or decreasing), with a bit of random scatter superimposed.

George.

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