I prefer dotplots to barplots

Masanao made this:

pointgrid.png

and this:

bargrid.png

for a paper I’m involved in. Unfortunately, neither one is going in the paper. In any case, I prefer the one with the dots.

I would only make a few little changes, mostly to make everything smaller (while keeping fonts readable), pulling the lines closer together and also writing the leftmost labels on two lines so they’ll fit.

2 thoughts on “I prefer dotplots to barplots

  1. It's a nice bit of work. I seem to have stopped doing anything in pure black-and-white line and stipple graphics. The laziness of always having colour laser printers available; or greyscale at the very least, which is not the same set of restrictions.

  2. I think the dotplots look nicer, but I have to admit that I find it much easier to compare effects across columns in the barplot (I think because it includes more of a visual clue to where the lower bound of zero is for each row, rather than having to rely on distance from the 50% line to make comparisons).

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