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Not quite the same, but box-and-whisker plots (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_plot) are good for visualising distributions. They show the mean, minimum, maximum and the first and second quartiles.

Since they show the minimum and maximum we can judge the overall spread, the mean tells us...well...the mean and first and second quartile lets us judge how close data is clustered around the mean.

See http://gnuplot.sourceforge.net/demo/candlesticks.html for gnuplot examples.



A minor point, but I think Box Plots usually show the median rather than the mean at the centre.

It would make sense perhaps to use standard deviations and means for some data, but in cases like this I think quartiles and medians make more sense.


But box plots seem to be needing turning on their side to visualise (assuming normal distribution)

I suppose I am looking for mathematically faithful whilst still Omnigraffle good looks

Cheers




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