Box Plot

Version

Application Scenario

The box plot, also known as the whisker plot, box-and-whisker plot, or box-and-line plot, gets its name from its box-like appearance. This statistical chart is used to display the distribution of a set of continuous data.

For example, you can use the box plot to analyze the score distributions of different subjects. The following figure shows that students' scores in English are generally higher than those in other subjects.

If you need to understand the characteristics of data distribution or identify abnormal values in data, you can use a box plot for data analysis. The box plot is most commonly used in statistical analysis activities such as quality management, personnel assessment, and exploratory data analysis.

Chart Feature

You may find box plots difficult to understand at the beginning. The following introduces the composition logic of the box plot used in FineReport.

The box plot features six attributes, namely Max, Min, Median, Third Quartile, First Quartile, and Abnormal Value, as shown in the following figure.

1. Among them, Median (Q2), Third Quartile (Q3), and First Quartile (Q1) are quartiles, which refer to three values located at the three division points when a group of data is divided into four equal sections after all the numbers are sorted in the ascending order, as shown in the following figure.

2. Max and Min are not simply the maximum and minimum values in the data. Instead, they are obtained through calculation.

• Max = Q3＋1.5 * (Q3 − Q1)

• Min = Q1 − 1.5 * (Q3 − Q1)

3. Abnormal Value: Abnormal values refer to the data points representing values larger than Max and smaller than Min.

The brief function description of the built-in box plot in FineReport follows the above introduction to the basic concepts of the box plot.

Data Form

Two data forms (Detail Data and Result Data) are available for the box plot. You can select the corresponding data form as needed during data binding.

1. Detail Data

If you select Detail Data, you can bind specific data, and FineReport will compute the five indicators: Max, Third Quartile, Median, First Quartile, and Min. For details about relevant application examples, see Box Plot by Group.

2. Result Data

If you select Result Data, you can directly bind the pre-calculated five indicators: Max, Third Quartile, Median, First Quartile, and Min. For details about relevant application examples, see Basic Box Plot.

Style of Abnormal Value

During data binding, if you select Detail Data as Data Form, you can set the style of Abnormal Value under Style > Series. (Detail Data indicates that specific data points exist.)

Note: If you set Type to None on the Abnormal Value setting panel, the abnormal values will not be displayed on the front end.

If you select Result Data as Data Form, abnormal values do not exist because no data points exist. Therefore, you can only set Color and Border under Style > Series.

Parameter Name for Indicators

To customize the prompts of data points, you need to use the parameter name corresponding to each indicator. The following table describes the parameter name corresponding to each indicator.