http://www.nabble.com/file/p14668788/paragraphs.png Hi, R is is world full of wonders... I created the attached plot, and I think it's exactly what I need! Well, actually I think it is more that wht I need... I wanted R to show the mean values of the categories on the x-axis and maybe the standard derivation as well. I am pretty confident that the bold horrizontal lines in the plot show the mean values. But what are the white boxes and the dashed lines? And what's that one small circle on the "Section" column supposed to mean. And if I would like to get rid of that small circle, how can I? Thanks a lot! -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Great-looking-plot---but-what-does-it-mean--tp14668788p14668788.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
"mika03" <someone29_7 at yahoo.de> wrote in message news:14668788.post at talk.nabble.com...> > http://www.nabble.com/file/p14668788/paragraphs.png > > R is is world full of wonders... I created the attached plot, and I think > it's exactly what I need! Well, actually I think it is more that wht I > need... > > I wanted R to show the mean values of the categories on the x-axis and > maybe > the standard derivation as well. > > I am pretty confident that the bold horrizontal lines in the plot show the > mean values. But what are the white boxes and the dashed lines? And what's > that one small circle on the "Section" column supposed to mean. > > And if I would like to get rid of that small circle, how can I?Perhaps this Wikipedia page will help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_plot "mean" and "standard deviation" are terms that explain normally distributed data. A box plot is intended to display similar information but without any assumption about the distribution of the data. The horizontal lines are the medians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median), not the means. The rectangular boxes show the middle 50% of your data -- the interquartile range (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interquartile_range). If the median is not in the "middle" of the box , your data are skewed. The small circle is an "outlier" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlier). Many options for a boxplot are actually buried in ?bxp instead of ?boxplot. To suppress the outlier, look in ?bxp and note that outpch=NA should get rid of the outlier points. efg Earl F. Glynn Stowers Institute for Medical Research
You might want to google "box and whisker plot". mika03 wrote:> > > http://www.nabble.com/file/p14668788/paragraphs.png > > Hi, > > R is is world full of wonders... I created the attached plot, and I think > it's exactly what I need! Well, actually I think it is more that wht I > need... > > I wanted R to show the mean values of the categories on the x-axis and > maybe the standard derivation as well. > > I am pretty confident that the bold horrizontal lines in the plot show the > mean values. But what are the white boxes and the dashed lines? And what's > that one small circle on the "Section" column supposed to mean. > > And if I would like to get rid of that small circle, how can I? > > Thanks a lot! >-- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Great-looking-plot---but-what-does-it-mean--tp14668788p14669939.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
Hi Mika03, It would be useful to know what function you used to create your plot. Assuming you used boxplot, do this: ?boxplot ?boxplot.stats Julian mika03 wrote:> > http://www.nabble.com/file/p14668788/paragraphs.png > > Hi, > > R is is world full of wonders... I created the attached plot, and I think > it's exactly what I need! Well, actually I think it is more that wht I > need... > > I wanted R to show the mean values of the categories on the x-axis and maybe > the standard derivation as well. > > I am pretty confident that the bold horrizontal lines in the plot show the > mean values. But what are the white boxes and the dashed lines? And what's > that one small circle on the "Section" column supposed to mean. > > And if I would like to get rid of that small circle, how can I? > > Thanks a lot!