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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 d

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.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Jaxan 2y ago
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.)
- wyldfire 2y ago
  In my experience of sharing violin plots with people who are unfamiliar with them, it's not intuitive that the curve represents the distribution. Even with the scatter plot over/underlaid. But that's okay, I don't mind explaining it and then the graph is easier to interpret imo.
wesleywt 2y ago
You need to develop the intuition in the first place to read box-plots. The author argues that there are other plots where you don't require intuition.
ncruces 2y ago
> You don't know where the rest are. Of course you do: they're in the whiskers; half in each whisker. That's the entire point of the picture, BTW.
- lkdfjlkdfjlg 2y ago
  You're right. I guess that's not the author's mistake then. His mistake is assuming "the whisker is small, therefore it has a small number of datapoints".
  - ncruces 2y ago
    That's not his mistake. He knows this, but repeatedly failed to convey this to others. That's like the entire point of the post: they're hard to teach to others (they're unintuitive) and there are better (more intuitive) alternatives. I dunno if I agree, but it's ironic that this thread started with a poster complaining about the author's bad intuition, while apparently managing to not have a good grasp of box plots themselves.
    - lkdfjlkdfjlg 2y ago
      What are you talking about? I have a perfect grasp of these things. As I said, half is in the shape area. You must've missed that. Also, that IS his mistake, it's literally the first thing in the post. And this stuff isn't hard or hard to teach _at all_ has long as you're at least 5.
      - ncruces 2y ago
        This thread started with bdjsiqoocwk, who wrote: > You don't know where the rest are. This is wrong, period. And the fact it's wrong is pretty much the entire point of the article. Are bdjsiqoocwk and lkdfjlkdfjlg the same poster? Please don't pick a needless fight.
        lkdfjlkdfjlg 2y ago
        [flagged]
kzrdude 2y ago
The "this looks like a small quantity" comparison is wrong, because it's pointing to the lowest quartile, which has a cutoff which looks like 0 to <8 or so. While the histogram count compared to is using a bit of 0 to <10 - so it's not comparing the same counts, unfortunately. Having the historgram also count quartiles (or bins that add up evenly to quartiles) would drive that point home a lot better. Apart from that quibble, it's a point very well taken.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Jaxan 2y ago

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.)

wyldfire 2y ago
In my experience of sharing violin plots with people who are unfamiliar with them, it's not intuitive that the curve represents the distribution. Even with the scatter plot over/underlaid. But that's okay, I don't mind explaining it and then the graph is easier to interpret imo.

wesleywt 2y ago

You need to develop the intuition in the first place to read box-plots. The author argues that there are other plots where you don't require intuition.

ncruces 2y ago

> You don't know where the rest are. Of course you do: they're in the whiskers; half in each whisker. That's the entire point of the picture, BTW.

lkdfjlkdfjlg 2y ago
You're right. I guess that's not the author's mistake then. His mistake is assuming "the whisker is small, therefore it has a small number of datapoints".
- ncruces 2y ago
  That's not his mistake. He knows this, but repeatedly failed to convey this to others. That's like the entire point of the post: they're hard to teach to others (they're unintuitive) and there are better (more intuitive) alternatives. I dunno if I agree, but it's ironic that this thread started with a poster complaining about the author's bad intuition, while apparently managing to not have a good grasp of box plots themselves.
  - lkdfjlkdfjlg 2y ago
    What are you talking about? I have a perfect grasp of these things. As I said, half is in the shape area. You must've missed that. Also, that IS his mistake, it's literally the first thing in the post. And this stuff isn't hard or hard to teach _at all_ has long as you're at least 5.
    - ncruces 2y ago
      This thread started with bdjsiqoocwk, who wrote: > You don't know where the rest are. This is wrong, period. And the fact it's wrong is pretty much the entire point of the article. Are bdjsiqoocwk and lkdfjlkdfjlg the same poster? Please don't pick a needless fight.
      - lkdfjlkdfjlg 2y ago
        [flagged]

kzrdude 2y ago

The "this looks like a small quantity" comparison is wrong, because it's pointing to the lowest quartile, which has a cutoff which looks like 0 to <8 or so. While the histogram count compared to is using a bit of 0 to <10 - so it's not comparing the same counts, unfortunately. Having the historgram also count quartiles (or bins that add up evenly to quartiles) would drive that point home a lot better. Apart from that quibble, it's a point very well taken.