Good Statistical Practice

General

• See our checklist

Graphics

At a department meeting on 18Oct06, statisticians in the department voted in favor of the following policy:

• In a small dataset (e.g., < 15 observations per category) it is mandatory to show the raw data in a graphic in a publication, and this cannot be done with dynamite plots (bar charts with error bars). Example

The vote was 22 in favor, 3 against. All 3 against would be in favor if "mandatory" were replaced with "usually". Therefore the following is department policy:

• Dynamite plots often hide important information. This is particularly true of small or skewed data sets. Researchers are highly discouraged from using them, and department members have the option to decline participation in papers in which the lead author requires the use of these plots.