21–30 of 258 posts
Violin plots and bee swarm plots are better. Jittered strip plots can be okay if you're careful to avoid saturation (or more points added in the saturated region will disappear as they can't make it any darker).
The author just has a bad intuition. On the first picture he says "this looks like a small quantity". No, you can't say that. All you can say is that half the data points are in the shades part. You don't know where the rest are.
I don’t think intuition is the right word. If you have never seen a box plot before, your intuition will not help parse it. (Unlike violin plots.)
But that's okay, I don't mind explaining it and then the graph is easier to interpret imo.
>box plots always make distributions look bell shaped I feel like this is where the confusion stems from for the author and everyone else here. Box plots don't make anything bell shaped (they don't change the distribution), they assume that your data follows a bell/gaussian shape. This is correct in cases where the central limit theorem can be applied (which is almost everywhere) - but when that is not the case, the…
Not sure how to square that with this statement on Wikipedia's page on box plots:
Box plots are non-parametric: they display variation in samples of a statistical population without making any assumptions of the underlying statistical distribution[3]
So the diagram should not be used because of an education problem with some audiences? Isn't that a bit like banning cars because some people can't drive? Some diagrams are simply not for mass consumption and this is one, particularly because it is designed to illustrate an interpretation of ranges instead of the direct/linear representation of the raw data. Of course I'd illustrate this fact as a Venn diagram compar…
The author has found that compared to other types of plots, people struggle to learn how to intepret box plots.
The author proposes some alternatives that they believe to be easier for people to interpret:
- Strip plots (for few data points)
- Jittered strip plots (for more data points)
- Distribution heatmap (for even more data points)
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This aligns with my experience of trying to convey information to non-technical or moderately technical people; box plots are a struggle for them. To me it does seem like the proposed alternatives would be more accessible.
Sure, we could try to better educate people about box plots, (as the author has done professionally); or we could consider using something that requires less effort for people to comprehend.
So the diagram should not be used because of an education problem with some audiences? Isn't that a bit like banning cars because some people can't drive? Some diagrams are simply not for mass consumption and this is one, particularly because it is designed to illustrate an interpretation of ranges instead of the direct/linear representation of the raw data. Of course I'd illustrate this fact as a Venn diagram compar…
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So the diagram should not be used because of an education problem with some audiences? Isn't that a bit like banning cars because some people can't drive? Some diagrams are simply not for mass consumption and this is one, particularly because it is designed to illustrate an interpretation of ranges instead of the direct/linear representation of the raw data. Of course I'd illustrate this fact as a Venn diagram compar…
It's not like banning cars, it is like banning horse carriages on high ways. We have better technology nowadays, including for plotting, so why not ditch the old? The author of the blog post has some good arguments. From your post, I cannot distill an argument as to why you would prefer specifically a box plot over a strip plot.
But that's not the purpose of a box diagram and the article even did a side by side comparison showing an apples and oranges comparison of 2 total different representations of the data.
Those diagrams were never meant to represent the data in the same way.
The article simply could have shown a better way of illustrating the data, rather than implying box diagrams are incorrect, which they aren't, any more than choosing a bad graph or axis is (CF. parent comment)
So the diagram should not be used because of an education problem with some audiences? Isn't that a bit like banning cars because some people can't drive? Some diagrams are simply not for mass consumption and this is one, particularly because it is designed to illustrate an interpretation of ranges instead of the direct/linear representation of the raw data. Of course I'd illustrate this fact as a Venn diagram compar…
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