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Ordering box plots

How you order the box plots affects the kinds of questions that are easy to answer.

Here you can see the US cigarette consumption dataset again. This time each box plot represents the distribution of cigarette consumption over time for a given US state. Thus each box plot is formed from 11 data points representing 1985 to 1995.

By default, the box plots are ordered alphabetically by state name. This makes it really easy to look up the details for a specific state, but difficult to answer questions about where the highest or lowest consumption can be found. Sorting the rows by median cigarette consumption makes those questions easier to answer.

Inter-quartile range (IQR) measures the variation in the "middle half" of the population (from the 25th percentile to the 75th percentile). That means that sorting by the IQR makes it easier to answer questions about how much variation there was among the "typical" population.

Which statement is false?

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Understanding Data Visualization

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