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I've stopped using box plots (2021)
tl;dr: After having explained how to read box plots to thousands of workshop participants, I now believe that they’re poorly conceived (box plots, not...
These issues arise from what I see as flaws in the traditional box plot design, which was first proposed by Mary Spear in 1952 and refined by dataviz legend John Tukey in 1969 (I can feel the flames licking at my heels already). As we’ll see in a moment, though, there are other chart types that can be used to communicate a wide variety of useful, distribution-based insights, butthat don’t require audiences to understand quantiles, quartiles, or any other abstract, complex concepts. As an independent educator and author, Nick Desbarats has taught data visualization and information dashboard design to thousands of professionals in over a dozen countries at organizations such as NASA, Bloomberg, The Central Bank of Tanzania, Visa, The United Nations, Yale University, Shopify, and the IRS, among many others.
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