IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jstats/v7y2024i3p58-966d1470786.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Integrated Violin-Box-Scatter (VBS) Plot to Visualize the Distribution of a Continuous Variable

Author

Listed:
  • David W. Gerbing

    (The School of Business, Portland State University, Portland, OR 97201, USA)

Abstract

The histogram remains a widely used tool for visualization of the distribution of a continuous variable, despite the disruption of binning the underlying continuity into somewhat arbitrarily sized discrete intervals imposed by the simplicity of its pre-computer origins. Alternatives include three visualizations, namely a smoothed density distribution such as a violin plot, a box plot, and the direct visualization of the individual data values as a one-dimensional scatter plot. To promote ease of use, the plotting function discussed in this work, Plot(x), automatically integrates these three visualizations of a continuous variable x into what is called a VBS plot here, tuning the resulting plot to the sample size and discreteness of the data. This integration complements the information derived from the histogram well and more easily generalizes to a multi-panel presentation at each level of a second categorical variable.

Suggested Citation

  • David W. Gerbing, 2024. "The Integrated Violin-Box-Scatter (VBS) Plot to Visualize the Distribution of a Continuous Variable," Stats, MDPI, vol. 7(3), pages 1-12, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jstats:v:7:y:2024:i:3:p:58-966:d:1470786
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2571-905X/7/3/58/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2571-905X/7/3/58/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kampstra, Peter, 2008. "Beanplot: A Boxplot Alternative for Visual Comparison of Distributions," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 28(c01).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Markus Demary, 2017. "Yield curve responses to market sentiments and monetary policy," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 12(2), pages 309-344, July.
    2. Miroslav Sirota & Marie Juanchich, 2015. "A direct and comprehensive test of two postulates of politeness theory applied to uncertainty communication," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 10(3), pages 232-240, May.
    3. Chanseok Park & Min Wang, 2024. "Parameter Estimation of Birnbaum-Saunders Distribution under Competing Risks Using the Quantile Variant of the Expectation-Maximization Algorithm," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 12(11), pages 1-17, June.
    4. Manuel Mendoza-Carranza & Elisabet Ejarque & Leopold A J Nagelkerke, 2018. "Disentangling the complexity of tropical small-scale fisheries dynamics using supervised Self-Organizing Maps," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(5), pages 1-28, May.
    5. Barrios Ramos, Iris & Espinoza Tenorio, Alejandro & Mesa Jurado, M. Azahara & Tovilla Hernández, Cristian & Mendoza Carranza, Manuel, 2021. "Percepción social de la salinización del agua para uso doméstico en Puerto Madero, Chiapas, México," Economia Agraria y Recursos Naturales, Spanish Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 21(01), June.
    6. Andreas M Neophytou & Elizabeth M Noth & Sa Liu & Sadie Costello & S Katharine Hammond & Mark R Cullen & Ellen A Eisen, 2016. "Ischemic Heart Disease Incidence in Relation to Fine versus Total Particulate Matter Exposure in a U.S. Aluminum Industry Cohort," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(6), pages 1-13, June.
    7. Kolassa, Stephan, 2016. "Evaluating predictive count data distributions in retail sales forecasting," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 788-803.
    8. Carolina Müller & Manja Hethke & Frank Riedel & Gerhard Helle, 2020. "Inter- and intra-tree variability of carbon and oxygen stable isotope ratios of modern pollen from nine European tree species," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(6), pages 1-35, June.
    9. Brzezinski, Michal, 2014. "Do wealth distributions follow power laws? Evidence from ‘rich lists’," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 406(C), pages 155-162.
    10. Michael C Thrun & Tino Gehlert & Alfred Ultsch, 2020. "Analyzing the fine structure of distributions," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(10), pages 1-20, October.
    11. repec:cup:judgdm:v:10:y:2015:i:3:p:232-240 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Vishva Danthurebandara & Jie Yu & Martina Vandebroek, 2015. "Designing choice experiments by optimizing the complexity level to individual abilities," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 1-26, March.
    13. John Joseph Valletta & Mario Recker, 2017. "Identification of immune signatures predictive of clinical protection from malaria," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(10), pages 1-14, October.
    14. Jibo Yue & Ting Li & Jianing Shen & Yihao Wei & Xin Xu & Yang Liu & Haikuan Feng & Xinming Ma & Changchun Li & Guijun Yang & Hongbo Qiao & Hao Yang & Qian Liu, 2024. "Winter Wheat Maturity Prediction via Sentinel-2 MSI Images," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 14(8), pages 1-22, August.
    15. Sara G. Romeo & Ilaria Secco & Edoardo Schneider & Christina M. Reumiller & Celio X. C. Santos & Anna Zoccarato & Vishal Musale & Aman Pooni & Xiaoke Yin & Konstantinos Theofilatos & Silvia Cellone Tr, 2023. "Human blood vessel organoids reveal a critical role for CTGF in maintaining microvascular integrity," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-18, December.
    16. Marcos Krull, 2020. "Comparing statistical analyses to estimate thresholds in ecotoxicology," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(4), pages 1-16, April.
    17. Aravindakshan, Sreejith & Rossi, Frederick J. & Krupnik, Timothy J., 2015. "What does benchmarking of wheat farmers practicing conservation tillage in the eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains tell us about energy use efficiency? An application of slack-based data envelopment analysis," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 90(P1), pages 483-493.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jstats:v:7:y:2024:i:3:p:58-966:d:1470786. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.