Discussion 4 (DTDS22)

[Matthew Banos]

• Have you encountered many/any box-and-whisker plots in the course of your work? On other dashboards?

• What about histograms?

• If you have little or no prior experience with them, do you think they are easy to understand? If not, can you think of some alternate ways to display distribution data?

[Maryann Roebuck]

I’ve used Box and Whisker plots in my graduate studies but not in the workplace. For analyzing large datasets, they’re helpful for identifying outliers and/or skewness of data.

[Elizabeth Petit]

I don’t think I’ve used box-and-whisker plots much in the workplace, but I’ve used histograms to display experimental results. Most recently, I’ve used both to help determine whether or not data is normally distributed and whether or not there is equal variance in data sets for my biostatistics class.

[SarahEvan Colvario]

I have not encountered box-and-whisker plots in my work, only in the occasional article I have read. I cannot recall if I have encountered histograms, which probably means not much/at all.

I think histograms are easier to understand than box-and-whisker plots. I think the distribution we’ve discussed of bar graphs works for a lay person quite well.

[Riley Smith]

I used box and whisker plots frequently in undergrad. I find them really helpful in understanding a lot of data at one time in a visually engaging way. I never really know when to use a histogram or how to glean sufficient information from it, while a box and whisker plot allows me to easily compare means, medians, quartiles, and standard deviations across multiple data sets. It is really helpful for me in understanding overall differences in datasets.

[Kathryna Corpuz]

In a work setting, I have not used or encountered box-and-whisker plots and histograms much. Workwise, I’m more used to seeing the standard bar charts or line graphs generally. I have had some exposure to these types of graphs in my undergraduate and graduate studies though. I find histograms a bit easier to understand especially when we talk about distribution data. The box-and-whisker plots are understood as well, but definitely it is helpful to have a refresher on what the components of that type of chart is to fully understand what you’re looking at.

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