On Jun 19, 8:26 am, "Jon Peltier"
wrote:
Del -

Yourchartallows plenty of different quantities to be shown, but I suspect
it may become cluttered, and at least for now, it's unfamiliar, and forces a
lot of back and forth between thechartand the legend. Don't knock a
"familiar idiom".

Theboxplot is pretty much self-explanatory especially since it is
familiar, and the difference between theboxitself and the whiskers is
immediately recognizable (compared to your multiple error bars colored
different shades of gray, which is slower to be interpreted). If you could
make whiskers of various line lengths, that might help.

I agree that the notchedboxplot must be rather obscure, as I've never seen
it used in any real display of information.

- Jon
-------
Jon Peltier,MicrosoftExcelMVP
Tutorials and Custom Solutions
Peltier Technical Services, Inc. -http://PeltierTech.com
_______

"Del Cotter" wrote in message

...



On Fri, 15 Jun 2007, inmicrosoft.public.excel.charting,
Andy Pope said:
The technique describes how to use an xy-scatter to construct the boxes.

You need to add a few more xy pairs in order to reduce the width of
the Median line and form the notches.

While I have as much reverence for the late John Tukey as the next
person, I don't see that boxes and whiskers as such are necessary these
days, except that they're a familiar idiom that the graph viewer will
usually recognise.

And even that isn't true for notched boxes, which I don't think many
people have seen. Certainly most couldn't interpret without them a
guide; I never even knew until reading that article just now what the
notches were supposed to represent-- I thought they were just meant to
enphasise the median in some way.

If we abandon the need to copy Tukey's shapes, doing this stuff inExcel
immediately gets a lot easier. Here's my idea of a boxless "box" and
whiskerdistributionchart, with circled outliers and an error range
around the median, all just using the standardExcelsymbol shapes.

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r264/del_c/
infographics/not_boxplot.gif

It would be simple to substitute circles, diamonds, or half-ticks, and
alter the thickness or colour of theExcelerror bars, to suit your
preferences, and I think the point comes across even though they're not
the traditional boxes.

--
Del Cotter
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- Show quoted text -

Wow!! I did not know my initial request generated such an exchange of
academic and technical passion. Just to let you know, I have decided
that if I need to generate a significant number of notched box whisker
charts, I am going to obtain the latest version of SigmaPlot (v 10
being the latest version) in order to generate them.

Jon, if your add-in can generate notched box whisker plots to the
scope and degree that SigmaPlot can, please let me know!!!

Bruce