2.1.2 Limitations of the Mean Value
There’s one caveat to working with mean values. They can be skewed by the presence (or absence) of just one observation if it is very different from the other values.
For our Asheville dataset, imagine that one of the 62°F temperatures was mistakenly recorded as 262°F. That would change the mean (average) value to approximately 72°F. A 6.45°F difference in the average monthly temperature is a very large change, climatically speaking.