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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? Som

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 comparing "box diagram" Vs "people" (intersection those who understand it) but I'm afraid the universal set may be mistaken as "those people who don't have eyes" rather than literally everything else. Perhaps we should stop using that too, since it's non obvious what the universal set is. All diagrams have some ambiguity and can be misinterpreted, sometimes it's deliberate (e.g. bar chart vertical axis not starting at 0 or scale not being linear) and that's why there's the saying "There's lies damn, lies, and statistics." That doesn't mean some diagrams are not useful, just that it's not suitable for some audiences who may misinterpret the data.

SillyUsername 2y ago
[flagged]
- ohmyiv 2y ago
  Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - SillyUsername 2y ago
    Point taken (not literally), I'm agreeing :)
- richrichie 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - SillyUsername 2y ago
    Ha, love it. Except on probability I'm probably much older than you. I'm not sensitive, I'm irritated at the effort to put together an argument but zero effort (pun intended) to argue the point.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- nosianu 2y ago
  I did not vote, but I can understand it - because of your first sentence already: > So the diagram should not be used because of an education problem with some audiences? You dismiss the problem of education as if that is free - but information is physical and spreading it takes significant amounts of time and energy, brains are what they are and hard to change, so this is so obviously a very significant problem that I don't see a basis for discussion given the context here. A forum such as this is a bad place to talk about very basic assumptions, to be able to have a useful discussion about topics such as this some minimum common understanding needs to be there. Accepting the reality of how people think and behave is rational. To answer your rhetorical question: Yes! That reason is valid. We usually only have less than a hundred comments that are useful, many more and most won't ever even see them. If we had to discuss such basics, it would be a huge waste of time, and it would be detrimental to the overall value of the discussion. That includes explaining it to the commenter. I think it is okay to make such comments less visible. In my view it's less about "punishment" or about annoying the writer, but about letting the other people concentrate on other comments that don't force one into side-tracked discussions about very basic things. I would suggest that you don't take it personal, we all occasionally are in that same boat.
  - SillyUsername 2y ago
    Fair enough, it is irritating, especially as although I am not the expert the author is, I am advance qualified in this field and passionate about the "best tool for the job" depending on what you want to convey Vs data clarity for a general audience (which from what I now believe, is the author's point of view)
317070 2y ago
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.
- SillyUsername 2y ago
  Yes the other diagrams are better for mass consumption, and illustrating direct representation of the data distribution. 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)
  - cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
    IIn all of your replies you make snide reference to “general audiences”, “mass consumption”, etc. You very obviously place yourself in a higher class because of your ability to correctly interpret box plots. Can we please just move past that though? The vast vast vast majority of box plots are for “general consumption”. The vast vast majority of box plots are used in place of a more suitable chart type. You seem to be arguing that, because a box plot is hypothetically suitable for some (in the grand scheme of things) corner case, that the author’s point is faulty. I think that you are completely overstating the importance of the hypothetical ‘correct case’. You’re getting stuck on a point that nobody, least of all the author, is making.
mkl 2y ago
When there are alternatives that are clearer and also don't have this education problem, why use box plots? You seem quite keen on them, but why?
- SillyUsername 2y ago
  There are a few advantages (see visualization section here pls http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_plot http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_plot ) but my main concern is that the problem is not with the diagram, it's with idea that it's somehow faulty. Sometimes you may want to highlight some core representation of data without the distraction of outliers (yes that does mean some people will use it for deliberate misrepresentation). But in this regard it's useful, as is on bar graphs not starting the vertical at 0 (because you want to illustrate relate difference not absolute amounts).
  - Angostura 2y ago
    The article doesn’t really argue that they are “faulty” just that there are better alternatives in the large majority of cases. I think he makes a compelling argument
    - SillyUsername 2y ago
      Fair enough, it was the comment that "better-designed chart types" that caught my eye. "better designed for general use" should have been the context I read it in.
quenix 2y ago
Driving isn't a medium of communication, so this is an apples to oranges comparison. If a medium of communication is misunderstood and found to be misleading to your audience, it doesn't really matter whether it's an education problem or not. It ceases to be a good communication medium. The entire purpose of data viz as the author discussed is to convey ideas to other people. The author argues that people tend to misunderstand this specific chart type. It is valid, then, to dismiss the visualisation as bad for public communication. Unfortunately, the technical merits of these things don't matter if most people don't understand them.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Driving isn't a medium of communication There is a lot of implicit (e.g. traffic signals) and explicit (e.g. indicators and horns) inter-driver communication that is at the heart of most crashes.
- SillyUsername 2y ago
  As I've mentioned in other comments less succinctly, data hiding is sometimes useful of for drawing attention to other areas. There are the better graphs the author mentioned for general purpose use, but the graph itself isn't at fault any more than using a bar chart with a poor scale (e.g omit 0-20) to do the same hiding.
  - cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
    What specific issue do you have with this article? “The graph itself isn’t at fault” is very “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”. Who cares? This distinction is utterly meaningless semantics. Why do you feel a need to ‘stand up’ for box plots? Why is this a tribalistic religious war?
cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
If this is your approach, the only way you ever could’ve made anything actually useful is by sheer coincidence. Box plots, and their alternatives, are communication tools. Do you not care to find a more clear way to communicate? In drawing an immediate comparison with banning cars, you’re being completely unjustifiably standoffish.
sloowm 2y ago
Why would you even use plots at all. You could just show the numbers for the 4 points represented in the box plot and people with proper education would understand. If people need diagrams it's just an education problem with some audiences. But the real education deficit shown here is psychology education. Humans are bad at doing some calculations inherently. They are not able to properly asses pie charts and easily confused by numbers with a lot of digits. Even before these studies were done people were able to come up with visualizations that were better suited for human understanding. People chose to use box plots because the visualization was better to understand by people than the numerical representation of the same information. Luckily there are now even better tools to represent the same numerical data in a way that is even better to understand. So, if you are truly educated properly you don't use visualization.
munch117 2y ago
> So the diagram should not be used because of an education problem with some audiences? A problem like this one that he mentions, "People associate longer shapes with greater quantity", is not something you can fix by teaching. Even if you know intellectually that the association is, in this case, wrong, you can't free yourself from the association. It's hardwired into the brain. People who work with this sort of diagram a lot will eventually build up context-specific associations that work better, overriding that instinct, to the point where it feels seamless. But even if it feels seamless and easy, the dissonance is still there, and may lower your comprehension speed and slightly impair your judgment. As a statistics expert, you are never going to notice that, because your baseline comprehension speed and judgment on the subject is so good, that this very minor impairment is lost in the noise. So you may not be a good judge of the usability qualities of the diagram type.

SillyUsername 2y ago

[flagged]

ohmyiv 2y ago
Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- SillyUsername 2y ago
  Point taken (not literally), I'm agreeing :)
richrichie 2y ago
[flagged]
- SillyUsername 2y ago
  Ha, love it. Except on probability I'm probably much older than you. I'm not sensitive, I'm irritated at the effort to put together an argument but zero effort (pun intended) to argue the point.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
nosianu 2y ago
I did not vote, but I can understand it - because of your first sentence already: > So the diagram should not be used because of an education problem with some audiences? You dismiss the problem of education as if that is free - but information is physical and spreading it takes significant amounts of time and energy, brains are what they are and hard to change, so this is so obviously a very significant problem that I don't see a basis for discussion given the context here. A forum such as this is a bad place to talk about very basic assumptions, to be able to have a useful discussion about topics such as this some minimum common understanding needs to be there. Accepting the reality of how people think and behave is rational. To answer your rhetorical question: Yes! That reason is valid. We usually only have less than a hundred comments that are useful, many more and most won't ever even see them. If we had to discuss such basics, it would be a huge waste of time, and it would be detrimental to the overall value of the discussion. That includes explaining it to the commenter. I think it is okay to make such comments less visible. In my view it's less about "punishment" or about annoying the writer, but about letting the other people concentrate on other comments that don't force one into side-tracked discussions about very basic things. I would suggest that you don't take it personal, we all occasionally are in that same boat.
- SillyUsername 2y ago
  Fair enough, it is irritating, especially as although I am not the expert the author is, I am advance qualified in this field and passionate about the "best tool for the job" depending on what you want to convey Vs data clarity for a general audience (which from what I now believe, is the author's point of view)

317070 2y ago

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.

SillyUsername 2y ago
Yes the other diagrams are better for mass consumption, and illustrating direct representation of the data distribution. 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)
- cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
  IIn all of your replies you make snide reference to “general audiences”, “mass consumption”, etc. You very obviously place yourself in a higher class because of your ability to correctly interpret box plots. Can we please just move past that though? The vast vast vast majority of box plots are for “general consumption”. The vast vast majority of box plots are used in place of a more suitable chart type. You seem to be arguing that, because a box plot is hypothetically suitable for some (in the grand scheme of things) corner case, that the author’s point is faulty. I think that you are completely overstating the importance of the hypothetical ‘correct case’. You’re getting stuck on a point that nobody, least of all the author, is making.

mkl 2y ago

When there are alternatives that are clearer and also don't have this education problem, why use box plots? You seem quite keen on them, but why?

SillyUsername 2y ago
There are a few advantages (see visualization section here pls http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_plot http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_plot ) but my main concern is that the problem is not with the diagram, it's with idea that it's somehow faulty. Sometimes you may want to highlight some core representation of data without the distraction of outliers (yes that does mean some people will use it for deliberate misrepresentation). But in this regard it's useful, as is on bar graphs not starting the vertical at 0 (because you want to illustrate relate difference not absolute amounts).
- Angostura 2y ago
  The article doesn’t really argue that they are “faulty” just that there are better alternatives in the large majority of cases. I think he makes a compelling argument
  - SillyUsername 2y ago
    Fair enough, it was the comment that "better-designed chart types" that caught my eye. "better designed for general use" should have been the context I read it in.

quenix 2y ago

Driving isn't a medium of communication, so this is an apples to oranges comparison. If a medium of communication is misunderstood and found to be misleading to your audience, it doesn't really matter whether it's an education problem or not. It ceases to be a good communication medium. The entire purpose of data viz as the author discussed is to convey ideas to other people. The author argues that people tend to misunderstand this specific chart type. It is valid, then, to dismiss the visualisation as bad for public communication. Unfortunately, the technical merits of these things don't matter if most people don't understand them.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> Driving isn't a medium of communication There is a lot of implicit (e.g. traffic signals) and explicit (e.g. indicators and horns) inter-driver communication that is at the heart of most crashes.
SillyUsername 2y ago
As I've mentioned in other comments less succinctly, data hiding is sometimes useful of for drawing attention to other areas. There are the better graphs the author mentioned for general purpose use, but the graph itself isn't at fault any more than using a bar chart with a poor scale (e.g omit 0-20) to do the same hiding.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
  What specific issue do you have with this article? “The graph itself isn’t at fault” is very “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”. Who cares? This distinction is utterly meaningless semantics. Why do you feel a need to ‘stand up’ for box plots? Why is this a tribalistic religious war?

cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago

If this is your approach, the only way you ever could’ve made anything actually useful is by sheer coincidence. Box plots, and their alternatives, are communication tools. Do you not care to find a more clear way to communicate? In drawing an immediate comparison with banning cars, you’re being completely unjustifiably standoffish.

sloowm 2y ago

Why would you even use plots at all. You could just show the numbers for the 4 points represented in the box plot and people with proper education would understand. If people need diagrams it's just an education problem with some audiences. But the real education deficit shown here is psychology education. Humans are bad at doing some calculations inherently. They are not able to properly asses pie charts and easily confused by numbers with a lot of digits. Even before these studies were done people were able to come up with visualizations that were better suited for human understanding. People chose to use box plots because the visualization was better to understand by people than the numerical representation of the same information. Luckily there are now even better tools to represent the same numerical data in a way that is even better to understand. So, if you are truly educated properly you don't use visualization.

munch117 2y ago

> So the diagram should not be used because of an education problem with some audiences? A problem like this one that he mentions, "People associate longer shapes with greater quantity", is not something you can fix by teaching. Even if you know intellectually that the association is, in this case, wrong, you can't free yourself from the association. It's hardwired into the brain. People who work with this sort of diagram a lot will eventually build up context-specific associations that work better, overriding that instinct, to the point where it feels seamless. But even if it feels seamless and easy, the dissonance is still there, and may lower your comprehension speed and slightly impair your judgment. As a statistics expert, you are never going to notice that, because your baseline comprehension speed and judgment on the subject is so good, that this very minor impairment is lost in the noise. So you may not be a good judge of the usability qualities of the diagram type.