  Anomalies are occurrences in a dataset that are in some way unusual and do
not fit the general patterns. The concept of the anomaly is typically
ill-defined and perceived as vague and domain-dependent. Moreover, despite some
250 years of publications on the topic, no comprehensive and concrete overviews
of the different types of anomalies have hitherto been published. By means of
an extensive literature review this study therefore offers the first
theoretically principled and domain-independent typology of data anomalies and
presents a full overview of anomaly types and subtypes. To concretely define
the concept of the anomaly and its different manifestations, the typology
employs five dimensions: data type, cardinality of relationship, anomaly level,
data structure, and data distribution. These fundamental and data-centric
dimensions naturally yield 3 broad groups, 9 basic types, and 63 subtypes of
anomalies. The typology facilitates the evaluation of the functional
capabilities of anomaly detection algorithms, contributes to explainable data
science, and provides insights into relevant topics such as local versus global
anomalies.
