5 ms·

The only advantage box plots had is that they can be drawn by hand. Now that computers are ubiquitous this is no longer valuable. Violin plots and bee swarm p

by mkl 2y ago

The only advantage box plots had is that they can be drawn by hand. Now that computers are ubiquitous this is no longer valuable. 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).

frodo8sam 2y ago
I'll take a plain histogram/kde plot every day of the week over those damn violin plots. I think box plots are quite usefull as they are easy to read but only if you trust the author has actually looked at the histogram. And you can typically not trust the author to have done that.
- mkl 2y ago
  Violin plots essentially are KDE plots, but you can put multiple of them on the same axes to compare groups.
- medstrom 2y ago
  Perhaps you'd find the half-violin plot more readable? Seems there's a whole world of all-in-one "raincloud plots" that integrates them, like the lower infographic here: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Z3tt/TidyTuesday/main/plots/2020_31/2020_31_PalmerPenguins.png https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Z3tt/TidyTuesday/main/plot... You can even make 'em show histograms: https://miro.medium.com/v2/1*J3Q4JKXa9WwJHtNaXRu-kQ.jpeg https://miro.medium.com/v2/1*J3Q4JKXa9WwJHtNaXRu-kQ.jpeg
  - catlifeonmars 2y ago
    For the latter, it looks like the histogram is probably sufficient. The violin plot just adds extra visual noise.
- klysm 2y ago
  A violin plot is literally just a KDE sideways.
  - seanhunter 2y ago
    It also has a box plot tacked on because "why not"?
    - klysm 2y ago
      Sometimes it’s useful if the mean/median has meaning
jhbadger 2y ago
I'm surprised the article just briefly mentions violin plots. Those are becoming popular in biomedical research -- much more common than the plots he suggests. And you can always overlay them with the jittered points if you want too.
j_bum 2y ago
I disagree about violin plots being better. Here is a great rant (borderline lecture) from Angela Collier on why they aren’t [0] [0] https://youtu.be/_0QMKFzW9fw?si=86mRAZRnFCBfSzw0 https://youtu.be/_0QMKFzW9fw?si=86mRAZRnFCBfSzw0
- sanderjd 2y ago
  Could you summarize the criticisms in this (pretty long) video, and what she is proposing as a better alternative (beanplots? or is she criticizing those too?)? I couldn't figure it out from perusing the transcript. I think it's useful to be able to compare the approximate shapes of histograms during exploratory data analysis. Is the thesis of this criticism that this isn't actually a useful thing to do, or that violin plots don't achieve this, or is it "just" an aesthetic argument?
  - interroboink 2y ago
    Her criticisms of violin plots seem to be (1) they combine histogram-style information with box-plot-style information, when you generally would only want one or the other [ie: don't use boxplot for bimodal, don't use histogram when boxplot suffices], (2) The histogram-style information is not comparable between blobs of data, since they're not visually aligned, have no tick marks, etc — a plain histogram is better for this, and (3) she finds them ugly on a personal level. EDIT: Maybe she'd be fine with using them in an exploratory manner. She seems to mainly be complaining about using them in publications, meant for other people to consume. Also: I did not watch the entire video (:
    - sanderjd 2y ago
      Thanks for this summary! I definitely hadn't seen the point about comparability between blobs of data because of the alignment. But that really seems like an odd point to me, as I almost entirely see / use these with time series data, where pretty much the whole point is to compare the evolution of the values over time using their "vertical" location, with a was to see the shape of a distribution of values at each point in time, at a glance.
  - 2y ago
klysm 2y ago
100% on the money. Box plots are an archaic technique for working around limitations that no longer exist.

by mkl 2y ago

frodo8sam 2y ago

I'll take a plain histogram/kde plot every day of the week over those damn violin plots. I think box plots are quite usefull as they are easy to read but only if you trust the author has actually looked at the histogram. And you can typically not trust the author to have done that.

mkl 2y ago
Violin plots essentially are KDE plots, but you can put multiple of them on the same axes to compare groups.
medstrom 2y ago
Perhaps you'd find the half-violin plot more readable? Seems there's a whole world of all-in-one "raincloud plots" that integrates them, like the lower infographic here: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Z3tt/TidyTuesday/main/plots/2020_31/2020_31_PalmerPenguins.png https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Z3tt/TidyTuesday/main/plot... You can even make 'em show histograms: https://miro.medium.com/v2/1*J3Q4JKXa9WwJHtNaXRu-kQ.jpeg https://miro.medium.com/v2/1*J3Q4JKXa9WwJHtNaXRu-kQ.jpeg
- catlifeonmars 2y ago
  For the latter, it looks like the histogram is probably sufficient. The violin plot just adds extra visual noise.
klysm 2y ago
A violin plot is literally just a KDE sideways.
- seanhunter 2y ago
  It also has a box plot tacked on because "why not"?
  - klysm 2y ago
    Sometimes it’s useful if the mean/median has meaning

jhbadger 2y ago

I'm surprised the article just briefly mentions violin plots. Those are becoming popular in biomedical research -- much more common than the plots he suggests. And you can always overlay them with the jittered points if you want too.

j_bum 2y ago

I disagree about violin plots being better. Here is a great rant (borderline lecture) from Angela Collier on why they aren’t [0] [0] https://youtu.be/_0QMKFzW9fw?si=86mRAZRnFCBfSzw0 https://youtu.be/_0QMKFzW9fw?si=86mRAZRnFCBfSzw0

sanderjd 2y ago
Could you summarize the criticisms in this (pretty long) video, and what she is proposing as a better alternative (beanplots? or is she criticizing those too?)? I couldn't figure it out from perusing the transcript. I think it's useful to be able to compare the approximate shapes of histograms during exploratory data analysis. Is the thesis of this criticism that this isn't actually a useful thing to do, or that violin plots don't achieve this, or is it "just" an aesthetic argument?
- interroboink 2y ago
  Her criticisms of violin plots seem to be (1) they combine histogram-style information with box-plot-style information, when you generally would only want one or the other [ie: don't use boxplot for bimodal, don't use histogram when boxplot suffices], (2) The histogram-style information is not comparable between blobs of data, since they're not visually aligned, have no tick marks, etc — a plain histogram is better for this, and (3) she finds them ugly on a personal level. EDIT: Maybe she'd be fine with using them in an exploratory manner. She seems to mainly be complaining about using them in publications, meant for other people to consume. Also: I did not watch the entire video (:
  - sanderjd 2y ago
    Thanks for this summary! I definitely hadn't seen the point about comparability between blobs of data because of the alignment. But that really seems like an odd point to me, as I almost entirely see / use these with time series data, where pretty much the whole point is to compare the evolution of the values over time using their "vertical" location, with a was to see the shape of a distribution of values at each point in time, at a glance.
- 2y ago

klysm 2y ago

100% on the money. Box plots are an archaic technique for working around limitations that no longer exist.