A related comment - don't rely (too much) on boxplots. They show only a few things, which may be limiting in many cases and completely misleading in others. Here are a couple of suggestions for plots which you may find more useful than the standard box plots: - figure 3.27 from http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~paul/RGraphics/chapter3.html - violin plots (see package vioplot) - density plots - histograms - box-percentile plots (bpplot from Hmisc) - quantile plots - if comparing 2 distributions, qq plots, quantile-difference plots, mean-difference plots etc.
> -----Original Message----- > From: Karin Lagesen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Tuesday, October 04, 2005 5:24 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: [R] boxplot statistics > > > > I have read and reread the boxplot and the boxplot stats page, and I > still cannot understand how and what boxplot shows. I realize that > this might be due to me not knowing enough statistics, but anyway... > > First, how does boxplot determine the size of the box? And is the line > inside the box the mean or the median (or something completely > different?) And how does it determine how long out the whiskers should > go? > > Also, the boxplot.stats page talks about "hinges", what are those? > "The two "hinges" are versions of the first and third quartile, i.e., > close to 'quantile(x, c(1,3)/4)'." > > Thankyou very much. > > Karin > -- > Karin Lagesen, PhD student > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://www.cmbn.no/rognes/ > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide! > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > ______________________________________________ R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html