> Can anyone explain why did they do this? Was it just to prove their hypothesis? I bet this guy had really high numeracy scores as well. It's likely a predete

> Can anyone explain why did they do this? Was it just to prove their hypothesis? I bet this guy had really high numeracy scores as well. It's likely a predetermined exclusion criterion (although they should explicitly state that). An extreme outlier on the primary measure may suggest that the subject was not doing the task correctly (resulting in an extremely low score) or it may suggest that the subject misreported their lack of programming knowledge (resulting in an extremely high score). Depending on what you're looking at, it can be standard procedure to exclude extreme outliers, but it should be announced as predetermined and be principled.