[R] adding the mean and standard deviation to boxplots

Bert Gunter gunter.berton at gene.com
Mon Feb 4 17:46:10 CET 2008


"As for the standard deviation, are you sure you want this?  Standard 
deviation only makes sense if the data are normally distributed..."
--------------

-- This is false, of course. What you probably meant to say is something
like:

"The sample standard deviation may not tell you what you think it tells you
if the underlying data are not distributed something like a normal
distribution."

For what the true sd for sure tells you, see e.g. Chebycheff's Thm.

-- Bert Gunter
Genentech



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