The exact meaning of the SEM might be difficult to explain to a lay audience, but the qualitative explanation is often sufficient. This graph also displays the accuracy of the mean, but these intervals are about twice as long as the intervals for the SEM. The confidence interval for the mean is hard to explain to a lay audience.
There is no probability involved! The error bars convey the variation in the data and the accuracy of the mean estimate. Which one you use depends on the sophistication of your audience and the message that you are trying to convey. My recommendation? Despite the fact that confidence intervals can be misinterpreted, I think that the CLM is the best choice for the size of the error bars the third graph. If I am presenting to a statistical audience, the audience understands the CLMs.
For a less sophisticated audience, I do not dwell on the probabilistic interpretation of the CLM but merely say that the error bars "indicate the accuracy of the mean. As explained previously, each choice has advantages and disadvantages.
What choice do you make and why? You can share your thoughts by leaving a comment. His areas of expertise include computational statistics, simulation, statistical graphics, and modern methods in statistical data analysis. But in my work, we're often interested in the distribution of values behind each mean. I've become a big fan of the box plot, since it provides so much more information.
I don't think it's too intimidating for non-statistical audiences. People can focus on just the mean if they want, and the box and whiskers can just be interpreted as giving a sense of "spread. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences Journal of Experimental Orthopaedics Fish Physiology and Biochemistry Nature Methods Advanced search.
Skip to main content Thank you for visiting nature. Download PDF. Subjects Publishing Research data Statistical methods. You have full access to this article via your institution. Figure 1: Error bar width and interpretation of spacing depends on the error bar type. Full size image. Figure 2: The size and position of confidence intervals depend on the sample.
Figure 3: Size and position of s. References 1 Belia, S. Article Google Scholar 3 Cumming, G. View author publications. Ethics declarations Competing interests The authors declare no competing financial interests. Supplementary information. Supplementary Table 1 Examples and sample calculations spreadsheet.
Rights and permissions Reprints and Permissions. About this article Cite this article Krzywinski, M. Copy to clipboard. Search Search articles by subject, keyword or author. Bar Chart. Line Graph.
Multi-set Bar Chart. Span Chart. Need to access this page offline? Download the eBook from here. This is essentially an arbitrary choice, as the value of zero need not be relevant in the context of the measurements taken. But note the effect of setting the minimum to zero; it's potentially quite comforting. The error in this graph looks smaller than in the other graphs. This problem has a simple solution shown in the first graph but it is not used as often as it should be.
Statistical Consulting Centre Graphs for statistical analysis Error bars on graphs. The figures below show different ways the estimates and confidence intervals might be plotted.
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