R help - Mar 2014 - Creating a box plot with whiskers when I only have mean, sd and n

Dear all,

I want to create a boxplot with whiskers. I want to compare several
studies. For each study I have

   1. mean
   2. standard deviation (sd)
   3. name
   4. number of observations (n)

How can i do this in R ?

normally I would type
> bxp
or
>boxplot
but this is not allowed when I only know mean and sd


-- 
Frederik Borup

MD, Ph.D.-stud.

Accident Analysis Group (UAG)

The Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Odense University Hospital (OUH)

The Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, SLB Kolding

University of Southern Denmark (SDU)

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On 14/03/14 08:52, Frederik Borup wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I want to create a boxplot with whiskers. I want to compare several
> studies. For each study I have
>
>     1. mean
>     2. standard deviation (sd)
>     3. name
>     4. number of observations (n)
>
> How can i do this in R ?
>
> normally I would type
>> bxp
> or
>> boxplot
>
> but this is not allowed when I only know mean and sd.
(1) Read the help for bxp.
(2) Think about what you want your box and whiskers to *represent* given 
that you only know the summary statistics.  (Is it *really* meaningful 
to create a boxplot in such circumstances?)
(3) If you can figure that out, then create an appropriate argument (a 
list) for bxp() and call bxp() with that argument.

cheers,

Rolf Turner

On 03/14/2014 06:52 AM, Frederik Borup wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I want to create a boxplot with whiskers. I want to compare several
> studies. For each study I have
>
>     1. mean
>     2. standard deviation (sd)
>     3. name
>     4. number of observations (n)
>
> How can i do this in R ?
>
> normally I would type
>> bxp
> or
>> boxplot
>
> but this is not allowed when I only know mean and sd
>
>
Hi Frederik,
You may want box.heresy in the plotrix package.

Jim