A box plot, also known as a whisker plot, visually summarizes the distribution of a dataset. It displays the following key components:
- Median: The line inside the box represents the median (the middle value) of the dataset.
- Quartiles: The edges of the box represent the first quartile (Q1) and the third quartile (Q3), which indicate the 25th and 75th percentiles, respectively.
- Interquartile Range (IQR): The height of the box (Q3 - Q1) represents the interquartile range, which shows the range of the middle 50% of the data.
- Whiskers: Lines extending from the box (whiskers) indicate the range of the data, typically extending to 1.5 times the IQR from the quartiles.
- Outliers: Data points that fall outside the whiskers are considered outliers and are often plotted as individual points.
Overall, a box plot provides a clear summary of the central tendency, variability, and potential outliers in the data.
