Don't bar barplots, but use them cautiously
Should we outlaw the the commonest visualization in psychology? The hashtag #barbarplots has been introduced as part of a systematic campaign to promote a ban on bar graphs. The argument is simple: barplots mask the distributional form of the data, and all sorts of other visualization forms exist that are more flexible and precise, including boxplots, violin plots, and scatter plots. All of these show the distributional characteristics of a dataset more effectively than a bar plot. Every time the issue gets discussed on twitter, I get a little bit rant-y; this post is my attempt to explain why. It's not because I fundamentally disagree with the argument. Barplots do mask important distributional facts about datasets. But there's more we have to take into account. Here's my basic argument: Hey #barbarplots folks: I agree with you that plotting variability is important, but the world of data is big! /1 � Michael C. Frank (@mcxfrank) August 10, 2016 hot: https://amzn.to/3xD...