I was talking with someone today about the wonderfully subtle ways in which words vary in their shades of meaning. Take for example the word “abnormality”.
That is most definitely a pejorative word. If you describe something as an abnormality, then you are saying there is something wrong with it, and you may be implying that it needs to be corrected.
But you could also choose to say that something is an “anomaly”. That sort of means the same thing, but the tone is quite different.
An anomaly might be a good thing. Maybe, depending on context, you want more anomalies, and are eager to search through your statistical results to find another one.
Or, you could simply choose to say that something is an “outlier”. That is a much more relaxed word.
To say that something is an outlier doesn’t imply that it is either good or bad, just that it is unusual. You are not taking a stand one way or another.
If anything, you are making a shrugging commentary on statistics itself. It’s as though you are saying “Oh well, we all know that numbers don’t always behave themselves. What can you do?”