This paper discusses issues I touched on in my last post on using proper statistical representation of data:
Speelman CP and McGann M (2013) How mean is the mean? Front. Psychol. 4:451.
Tag Archives: mean
Barplot Madness
Maybe it is because of the change in fields and scientific environment, but I increasingly doubt data presented in talks, posters and articles. Mostly because I find myself wondering whether the choice of statistical description of the data makes any sense. I am not speaking of advanced statistics at all, just the simplest descriptive techniques and the choice of the right plot for it.

My doubts are usually raised when I see a bar plot as sketched in figure 1. What looks like a rather okay representation of data actually does not really give you an intuitive idea of how the data are distributed.
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