what does the winsorized mean tell you 
the winsorized mean is less sensitive to outliers because it can replace them with less extreme values that is it is less susceptible to outliers versus the arithmetic average however if a distribution has fat tails the effect of removing the highest and lowest values in the distribution will have little influence because of the high degree of variability in the distribution figures one major downside for winsorized means is that they naturally introduce some bias into the data set by reducing the influence of outliers the analysis is modified for better analysis but also removes information about the underlying data strengths of winsorized meanthere are several situations in which using the winsorized mean is best these vague situations are listed below with more specific examples of where winsorized mean may be most useful in the next section times when it s sometimes best to use winsorized mean includes when there s winsorized mean levelthe winsorization level is crucial for effectively using the winsorized mean the winsorization level determines the percentage of extreme values to be replaced with less extreme ones to determine the appropriate winsorization level consider data exploration relying on domain knowledge conducting sensitivity analyses and consulting with experts who may be more familiar on what extreme values may look like 