the.com/odd one out
The one data point too interesting to delete, even when it ruins your average.
means A person or thing that's noticeably different from everyone else in the group it's sitting in.
from Straightforward compound phrase: 'odd' carrying its old sense of 'unmatched, left over from a pair or set' (as in odd socks or an odd number that can't be evenly split), plus 'one out' marking it as the single item excluded from the matching set. It's the same 'odd' used in children's matching games and puzzles — 'which of these is not like the others' — a phrase that itself hardened into this fixed idiom over the 20th century.
- statistics name
- called an outlier when it is rude
- evolutionary trick
- predators target the different one first
- cognitive bias
- brains spot it faster than any match
- irony
- every group has one, making it universal