[R] boxplot statistics

Graham Williams Graham.Williams at togaware.com
Tue Oct 4 13:02:36 CEST 2005


Received Tue 04 Oct 2005  7:26pm +1000 from Karin Lagesen:
> 
> 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)'."

Wikipedia has a reasonable description

	   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxplot

Regards




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