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#violinplots#boxplots#datavisualization

violin plots should not exist

Angela Collier

381K subscribers • 2 videos on Hallway

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  • Recommended by 2 people: 2 on Hacker News.
  • Presented by Angela Collier
  • An opinion. It argues one side of a question engineers disagree on.

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

289K views3 years ago2 recommendations

Graphics and audioComputer scienceData visualization

Angela Collier argues against the use of violin plots for data visualization, explaining why they are difficult to read and often misleading.

Violin plots are never the best version of a plot. They are hard to read and bad. Violinplot: stat.cmu.edu/~rnugent/PCMI2016/papers/ViolinPlots.pdf Beanplot: stat.cmu.edu/~rnugent/PCMI2016/papers/Beanplot.pdf Most plots from Harvard Open Courseware stuff: labxchange.org/library/items/lb:LabXchange:46f64d7a:html:1 Patreon (join for exclusive video each month): patreon.com/acollierastro

Why it's here

2 people recommend this, 1 disputes it

What people say. Recommended as an entertaining and educational critique of violin plots and data visualization practices.

bjolion Hacker News • Recommends

On “Friends don't let friends make certain types of data visualizations”

I have never liked violin plots,but I am very much not in the field of data visualisation. Just a week ago I stumbled on a video titled "violin plots should not exist" which made things fall into place: link to this video
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j_bumon Hacker News • Recommends

On “I've stopped using box plots (2021)”

I disagree about violin plots being better. Here is a great rant (borderline lecture) from Angela Collier on why they aren’t 0 0 link to this video
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karmakazeon Hacker News • Disputes

On “I've stopped using box plots (2021)”

…siders worthy of some plots, and other specific situations that the author doesn't consider worthy of other plots. At best, don't use box plots if your distributions do not have a single mode and may likely be misinterpreted is my takeaway. Here's a rant against violin plots by my fave physicist ranter0 (not Sabine), so maybe never use them. 0 link to this video…
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seanhunteron Hacker News • Mentions

On “Plotnine”

I see violin plots on the front page. Just say no to violin plots. In almost any situation you either want to talk about the actual distribution (in which case plotting the distribution on one side of the line arranged horizontally is significantly superior to plotting it vertically on both sides of the line for some reason as a violin plot does) or you want to talk about the quartiles etc in which case a boxplot is better. A violin plot basically tries to do both and as a result does them both badly. Extended anti-violin plot rant here link to this video
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