Tag: jitter plot

Data visualization lessons: Jitter charts, screwups, and visionaries

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://marypatcampbell.substack.com/p/data-visualization-lessons-jitter

Video:

Excerpt:

Jitter charts are my new favorite tool for displaying how distributions change over time.

I used them to great effect in my recent post One Bad Year? Comparing the Long-Term Public Pension Fund Returns Against Assumptions.

I’m often looking at distributions, and wanting to communicate something about how those distributions change over time, or how distributions compare. Often, I have to simply pick out key percentiles in those distributions, or key aspects, such as mean and standard deviation.

But why not graph all the points in one’s sample directly, if one has them?

That’s where jitter charts can help.

Author(s): Mary Pat Campbell

Publication Date: 16 Sep 2022

Publication Site: STUMP at substack

“Dispersion & Disparity” Research Project Results

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://3iap.com/dispersion-disparity-equity-centered-data-visualization-research-project-Wi-58RCVQNSz6ypjoIoqOQ/

Graphic:

The same dataset, visualized two different ways. The left fixates on between-group differences, which can encourage stereotyping. The right shows both between and within group differences, which may discourage viewers’ tendencies to stereotype the groups being visualized.

Excerpt:

Ignoring or deemphasizing uncertainty in dataviz can create false impressions of group homogeneity (low outcome variance). If stereotypes stem from false impressions of group homogeneity, then the way visualizations represent uncertainty (or choose to ignore it) could exacerbate these false impressions of homogeneity and mislead viewers toward stereotyping.

If this is the case, then social-outcome-disparity visualizations that hide within-group variability (e.g. a bar chart without error bars) would elicit more harmful stereotyping than visualizations that emphasize within-group variance (e.g. a jitter plot).

Author(s): Stephanie Evergreen

Publication Date: 2 Aug 2022

Publication Site: 3iap