If they notice that a large amount of Teacher A's test scores appear in the first quartile range, they might help the teacher with their lesson plans to improve future test scores. They might input test score data from three different teachers. These diagrams are practical in various statistical applications, but consider the example where a principal creates a box plot. Related: How To Use Conditional Formatting in Excel in 5 Steps Why use a box plot?īox plots can help you visualize the distribution of values, identify outliers and compare different categorical values.

Box plots may also have dots beyond the whiskers to indicate outliers.

The end of each of these lines has a 'whisker' that indicates the maximum and minimum values, respectively. Lines extending from the top and bottom of the rectangle represent all the numbers in the first and third quartiles. This component also has a line going through the middle to indicate the data set's median value. The rectangular component of a box plot represents all the numbers in the second quartile. What is a box plot?Ī box plot, or a box and whisker plot, is a diagram that visually summarizes the distribution of numerical values in a data set. In this article, we explain how to make a box plot in Excel via two simple methods. Understanding how to create this type of diagram can help you visually analyze how much of your data appears in different quartiles. Some people rely on Excel to turn their data into a box plot. It can be challenging to quickly interpret large amounts of numerical data.

Making boxplots in excel 2010