Small count data presents challenges for analytics and requires significant data inspection. Outliers may become a problem for small count data and are often overlooked. A single outlier may have a strong effect on small count data because of the difficulty in identifying the nature of the outlier. In the healthcare industry, small count data often represent life-threatening incidences, such as rare diseases or “never events” in surgeries. The focus of this research is on data sets that report retained surgical devices.

Electronic trading markets have evolved rapidly with continued adoption of new technologies and growing information acquisition and processing capabilities. Traditional perspectives on trading performance adopted a monolithic view of information.