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A pile of freshly turned compost attracted Goose away from the path. Ah lovely. The wife would love to have these in their nest. Active bacteria is the next best thing to down feather. Gleefully he scratched and poked and rustled and dug. A wide leaf, with a partial imprint of Snow Ears paw caught his attention.
Curiosity got the better of him so he scratched the surface next to this piece. Other scraps with more numbers turned up.
Goose half carried and half dragged the whole stack home. There he arranged the original surveys according to their numbered homes and he was surprised to note that all, except for the bear's den, was below 16 thousand seeds. That could only mean that outlier must had been included in Scales' report. Just to be doubly sure, he calculated the dispersion for both the size and price of the homes in the survey with and without the data from the bear's den using the following sample variance formula,  Goose thought and thought as he trudged up and down his garden path. What happened? Could it be possible that Scales made a mistake? But as a statistician, he should have known about outliers and their effect on the rest of the data. The sample variance of 1009.7 for the price that included the outlier is 40 times more than the calculation without the outlier. Hence the price of 16,000 seeds was far above the average for the market in Upper Valley Ridge. Using either the Mod or the Median would have reflected the prices there better. Even if they were to use the Mean average of 5,700 seeds, it would still be closer to the average than 16,200 seeds. Finally Goose decided that most probably Snow Ears had made a mistake, which caused Scales to make his error in calculation. Rabbits never really have any kind of business acumen anyway. All they do is reproduce and destroy vegetation. That was it. The housing market bubble and crash was all Snow Ear's fault. Goose stomped off to Scales's office and turned his beak up at Snow Ears when that fellow approached him. He would not even speak to the rabbit as he waited for Scales to return from his weekly lunch. Eventually the snake, bloated to a quarter of his length, slithered into the hole to find Goose's feathers all worked up into a ruffle. "Is something the matter, friend?" Scales asked. "Yes," Goose quacked. "I found the original forms of your survey on Upper Valley Ridge. And the outlier skewed the result so badly, I think it must have caused the bubble." "Now, now, my friend. We must look at the facts. The outlier might have affected the initial price of the homes, but the rapid rise of prices after that was determined by the market." "Are you going to let Snow Ears get away with it then?" Snow Ears stood up on his hind legs, with eyes bulging and ears drooping back in disbelief. Scales turned to him. "Please close the door on your way out Snow Ears." When the rabbit dropped on his forelegs and stretched towards them as though about to voice his protestations, Scales hissed with more vehemence, "Close the door on your way out." The rabbit turned away and did as told, though he took his time closing the door. He huddled outside, trying to listen but the leaves muffled the voices floating out to him.
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