boxplot statistics

Hi

Try to find some textbook about statistics. You can get many 
explanations just by finding "boxplot" by e.g. Google and reading 
whot you found.

And of course you can get some information from help pages you 
mentioned.

coef: this determines how far the plot "whiskers" extend out from
          the box.  If 'coef' is positive, the whiskers extend to the
											^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
          most extreme data point which is no more than 'coef' times
          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
          the length of the box away from the box. A value of zero
          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
          causes the whiskers to extend to the data extremes (and no
          outliers be returned).

HTH
Petr

To:             	r-help at r-project.org
From:           	Karin Lagesen <karin.lagesen at medisin.uio.no>
Date sent:      	Tue, 04 Oct 2005 11:24:04 +0200
Subject:        	[R] boxplot statistics

I have read and reread the boxplot and the boxplot stats page, and I
still cannot understand how and what boxplot shows. I realize that
this might be due to me not knowing enough statistics, but anyway...

First, how does boxplot determine the size of the box? And is the line
inside the box the mean or the median (or something completely
different?) And how does it determine how long out the whiskers should
go?

Also, the boxplot.stats page talks about "hinges", what are those? 
"The two "hinges" are versions of the first and third quartile, i.e.,
close to 'quantile(x, c(1,3)/4)'."

Thankyou very much.

Karin
-- 
Karin Lagesen, PhD student
karin.lagesen at medisin.uio.no
http://www.cmbn.no/rognes/

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Petr Pikal
petr.pikal at precheza.cz