Understanding Box-and-Whisker Plots: Part II

Understanding Box-and-Whisker Plots: Part II

Introduction

A box-and-whisker plot is a useful way to summarize the distribution of a data set. The box represents the middle 50% of the values, while the lines extending from the box, called whiskers, show how...

A teacher displays a box-and-whisker plot of students’ speech competition scores. The box shows where the middle 50% of the scores lie. But what do the lines on either side tell us?

These lines are called whiskers. A whisker extends from either end of the box to the minimum or maximum value. The whiskers help describe the distribution, or ...