Box plot
A chart of a group's spread: a box around the middle half of the values, a line at the median, and dots for unusual values.
An average hides how spread out the values are. A box plot shows the spread. The box runs from the 25th to the 75th percentile, so the middle half of the values sit inside it. The line across the box is the median. The whiskers reach out to the more typical extremes, and dots beyond them are unusual values.
Try it now
The same 18 months of trail-shoe orders. Switch to bars and turn off the zero baseline: small differences suddenly look huge. Then hide the last month and the false collapse disappears.
Learn it properly
Charts with Matplotlib · Line, bar, scatter, histogram and box plots, labeled and honest. About 40 minutes.
Other terms from the same lesson
- histogram: A chart that sorts values into ranges and shows how many fall in each, so you can see which values are common.
- log scale: An axis where each step is ten times the last, so values from tiny to huge all fit and equal steps mean equal percentage growth.
- small multiples: A grid of small, simple charts, one per group, drawn on the same scale so they're easy to compare.
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