Elementary uses “standard score”, also known as “Z-score” for anomaly detection. This score represents the number of standard deviations of a value from the average of a set of values.

According to the empirical rule, in a standard normal distribution:

  • ~68% of values have an absolute z-score of 1 or less.
  • ~95% of values have an absolute z-score of 2 or less.
  • ~99.7% of values have an absolute z-score of 3 or less.

Values with a standard score of 3 and above are considered outliers, and this is a recommended threshold for anomaly detection. This is the default Elementary uses as well, and it can be changed using the var anomaly_score_threshold in the global configuration.

You can use the model anomaly_sensitivity to see if values of metrics from your last run would have been considered anomalies in different scores. This can help you decide if there is a need to adjust the sensitivity:

Elementary anomaly detectionAll configuration params