 It is a robust statistic that has a breakdown point of 0.29, which means that the statistic remains bounded even if nearly 30 percent of the data have been contaminated.This robustness is an important advantage over the sample mean, which has a zero breakdown point, being proportional to any single observation and so liable to being misled by even one outlier.The sample median is even more robust, having a breakdown point of 0.50.