nonextremes

Nonextremes is a term used across disciplines to refer to elements that are not at the endpoints of a distribution, range, or set. The precise meaning varies by field, but it generally denotes central or ordinary cases, not outliers or vertices.

In statistics and data analysis, nonextremes describe observations within the bulk of the distribution. Extreme value theory separates extremes from non-extremes, with the latter representing the majority of data that fit common models and do not require tail-focused methods.

In convex geometry, an extreme point of a convex set cannot be written as a convex combination of other points in the set. Non-extreme points, by contrast, can be expressed as such convex combinations and may lie in the interior or on lower-dimensional faces.

In risk assessment or climate studies, non-extreme events are those that do not meet defined thresholds for “extremeness.” They describe everyday variability rather than rare, high-impact events, and are often modeled with standard distributions.

Because the term lacks a single universal definition, its exact meaning hinges on context, requiring specification of the applicable distribution, set, or criteria.