On Fri, 28 Feb 2003, John Poole wrote in part:
> I see the value of a graphic display of distributions; however,
> given the large number of measures, it does not seem practical
> (overwhelming).
This may be true with SPSS. Minitab offers (or used to offer) a
one-line version of a boxplot, something like this:
-----( + )-------
showing the minimum (left end), lower hinge ("("), median ("+"), upper
hinge (")"), and maximum (right end), and would plot a whole collection
of these (for different variables, or for different subgroups of the
data) on a common horizontal axis. If you're using one line per
variable anyway, it's not much more daunting (to me, anyway) to report
a table of results like this:
Variable Mean SD boxplot
Var1 17.5 8.23 ---( + )--
Var2 20.6 10.14 ---( + )---
which you might want to arrange in sections each of which has a common
boxplot axes and a set of somehow-comparable variables. Minitab would
give you the variable name and boxplot; I think you might have to edit
in the mean and s.d., but I can't check that out until I re-install
Minitab on my new computer (the hard drive died in my former PC last
month, and having just moved I haven't yet found my original Minitab
disks... sigh). I do not recall whether SPSS produces boxplots, and in
particular one-line displays like this.
Good luck! -- Don.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Donald F. Burrill [EMAIL PROTECTED]
56 Sebbins Pond Drive, Bedford, NH 03110 (603) 626-0816
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