People have conflicting goals. On the one hand they long to compress many numbers into one or a few summary statistics. On the other hand, the moment such lus

People have conflicting goals. On the one hand they long to compress many numbers into one or a few summary statistics. On the other hand, the moment such lusted after summaries mislead in some way they regret the data compression. What's really going on is that people want a simplicity (often in the form of definite conclusions) which may just not exist. This is really a common malaise of the human condition. Similarly, the distribution represented by a box plot itself is often the distribution of "just one sample". When viewed as such, a distro has its own uncertainty[1] and that uncertainty is not represented in a violin plot, for example. As with every "right tool for the job" debate, people will vary based on experience with the tools, including how to simplify/explain them to others. [1] https://github.com/c-blake/bu/blob/main/doc/edplot.md https://github.com/c-blake/bu/blob/main/doc/edplot.md