Beyond Bar and Line Graphs: Time for a New Data Presentation Paradigm

By T. Weissgerber, N. Milic, S. Winham, V. Garovic. PLoS Biology, 2015

646 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Figures in scientific publications are critically important because they often show the data supporting key findings. Our systematic review of research articles published in top physiology journals (n = 703) suggests that, as scientists, we urgently need to change our practices for presenting continuous data in small sample size studies. Papers rarely included scatterplots, box plots, and histograms that allow readers to critically evaluate continuous data. Most papers presented continuous data in bar and line graphs. This is problematic, as many different data distributions can lead to the same bar or line graph. The full data may suggest different conclusions from the summary statistics. We recommend training investigators in data presentation, encouraging a more complete presentation of data, and changing journal editorial policies. Investigators can quickly make univariate scatterplots for small sample size studies using our Excel templates.

Subfields: Statistics and Probability

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4d02488921e248b8a0cfe70f7d60c0606d3954c4

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Citations in the corpus

Raincloud plots: a multi-platform tool for robust data visualization (2018, background): “, by cropping of the Y-axis), 2) it fails to represent the actual data underlying relevant parameter inferences, 3) it often leads to misleading inferences about the magnitudes of statistical differences between conditions (Weissgerber et al., 2015) and 4) it may obscure differences in distributions”
If your P value looks too good to be true, it probably is: Communicating reproducibility and variability in cell biology (2019, background): “…a single average hair length, it would not describe asymmetrical “hipster” haircuts nor capture the large range of hair lengths.4 Similarly, bar graphs are problematic because they obscure the distribution of cell-level data as well as the sample-to-sample repeatability (Weissgerber et al., 2015).”
Two‐current choice flumes for testing avoidance and preference in aquatic animals (2017, background): “If this is impossible for some reason, cue preferences should, at a minimum, be presented and analysed as before and after the side switch, and illustrated using transparent data presentation standards (e.g. boxplots or histograms rather than bar plots; Weissgerber et al. (2015)).”