Using package 'compositions' on count data and scaling with Aitchison geometry using function acomp(), the summary() function displays matrices for (among other descriptive statistics) minimum, Q1, median, Q3, and maximum. These matrices are not symmetric because they are based on log-ratios. An example is the median matrix: $med filter gather graze predate shred filter 1.0000000 0.09060847 0.7083333 0.1833333 1.416667 gather 11.4166667 1.00000000 9.0000000 2.2083333 18.750000 graze 1.4166667 0.11111111 1.0000000 0.2403846 1.750000 predate 5.5000000 0.45299145 4.1666667 1.0000000 8.500000 shred 0.7083333 0.05341880 0.5833333 0.1180556 1.000000 What should I read to learn how to interpret this output?[1] I need to explain the results to non-technical decision-makers so they can see (boxplot() does a great job of this) and understand the variability of each data set. Rich [1] 'Analyzing Compositional Data with R', page 79, mentions these measures of center and distribution but not how to interpret them.