Creating surface plots

May 28th, 2010

A 3d wireframe plot is a type of graph that is used to display a surface – geographic data is an example of where this type of graph would be used or it could be used to display a fitted model with more than one explanatory variable. These plots are related to contour plots which are the two dimensional equivalent. Read the rest of this entry »

Displaying data using level plots

May 3rd, 2010

A level plot is a type of graph that is used to display a surface in two rather than three dimensions – the surface is viewed from above as if we were looking straight down and is an alternative to a contour plot – geographic data is an example of where this type of graph would be used. A contour plot uses lines to identify regions of different heights and the level plot uses coloured regions to produce a similar effect. Read the rest of this entry »

Summarising data using box and whisker plots

April 25th, 2010

A box and whisker plot is a type of graphical display that can be used to summarise a set of data based on the five number summary of this data. The summary statistics used to create a box and whisker plot are the median of the data, the lower and upper quartiles (25% and 75%) and the minimum and maximum values. Read the rest of this entry »

Summarising data using scatter plots

April 18th, 2010

A scatter plot is a graph used to investigate the relationship between two variables in a data set. The x and y axes are used for the values of the two variables and a symbol on the graph represents the combination for each pair of values in the data set. This type of graph is used in many common situations and can convey a lot of useful information. Read the rest of this entry »

Summarising data using histograms

April 11th, 2010

The histogram is a standard type of graphic used to summarise univariate data where the range of values in the data set is divided into regions and a bar (usually vertical) is plotted in each of these regions with height proportional to the frequency of observations in that region. In some cases the proportion of data points in each region is shown instead of counts. Read the rest of this entry »