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Boxplot: Set Whisker options #277

Description

@jdittrich

Problem: Boxplot Whiskers can map to different data – sometimes this is +- 1.5 times the interquartil range, sometime the 5th and 95th percentile etc. In the box documentation, it is state that plotly uses the +-1.5 IQR as a standard. It is also stated that the boxpoints option allows other options, but seemingly boxpoints sets the displaying sof catterpoint and not of whiskers.

Proposed Solution: An option for setting what the whiskers mean. Candidates for this option would:

  • n * IQR (for a +-1.5* the IQR, like the current default)
  • nth percentiles (for something like a 5%/95% position)
  • n*sd (for a +- 1 standard deviation position)

Or, if that option(s) already exists, a hint in the docuementation on how to set them.

Activity

  1. etpinard commented on Feb 24, 2016

    @etpinard
    Contributor

    Thanks for the very clear description 🍻

    You are correct. There is no way to override the box trace whisker metric at the moment.

    Adding whiskers option is a great suggestion!

    Unfortunately, because of other obligations, no plotly.js team member will dedicate time to this enhancement until at least April 1st.

    That said, this issue could be a great way for someone from the community to make a PR. All the action will take place in src/traces/box/ starting by adding a trace attribute in src/traces/box/attributes.js then coercing it in the default step src/traces/box/defaults.js and finally generalizing the calc step in src/traces/box/calc.js.

  2. jdittrich commented on Feb 28, 2016

    @jdittrich
    Author

    🍻 cheers!
    Thanks for pointing out the relevant files. I see what I can do but can't promise that I'm quicker than April the 1st :-)

  3. alanocallaghan commented on Jun 12, 2017

    @alanocallaghan

    @etpinard @jdittrich is this still unresolved?

  4. jdittrich commented on Jun 13, 2017

    @jdittrich
    Author

    @alanocallaghan sadly not, I was unable to tackle it.

  5. alexcjohnson commented on Aug 15, 2017

    @alexcjohnson
    Collaborator

    see also #1953 - one of the options should be max/min (which I guess would count as 0/100th percentile?) - and then rather than the current hard-coded dependence on boxpoints, boxpoints should just affect the default value of this setting.

  6. FelixZY commented on May 15, 2019

    @FelixZY

    Any updates on this in 2019? Having the whiskers mean one thing in some graphs (where the boxpoints are visible) and another in others (where the boxpoints are not visible) is somewhat confusing.

  7. diegoscarabelli commented on Jan 16, 2020

    @diegoscarabelli

    Agreed. Whiskers should correspond to editable percentile. That's how matplotlib does it.

  8. FilipVel commented on Jul 7, 2020

    @FilipVel

    Any update on this issue?

  9. ahmedhosny commented on Jul 14, 2020

    @ahmedhosny

    Seems like an old issue but keeps on coming back. I was a bit thrown off when I set boxpoints=False but suddenly my whiskers extended to cover all the outliers and the entire plot changed. This is for plotly.py.

    Screenshot from 2020-07-13 20-14-07

  10. jackparmer commented on Sep 10, 2020

    @jackparmer
    Contributor

    This issue has been tagged with NEEDS SPON$OR

    A community PR for this feature would certainly be welcome, but our experience is deeper features like this are difficult to complete without the Plotly maintainers leading the effort.

    What Sponsorship includes:

    • Completion of this feature to the Sponsor's satisfaction, in a manner coherent with the rest of the Plotly.js library and API
    • Tests for this feature
    • Long-term support (continued support of this feature in the latest version of Plotly.js)
    • Documentation at plotly.com/javascript
    • Possibility of integrating this feature with Plotly Graphing Libraries (Python, R, F#, Julia, MATLAB, etc)
    • Possibility of integrating this feature with Dash
    • Feature announcement on community.plotly.com with shout out to Sponsor (or can remain anonymous)
    • Gratification of advancing the world's most downloaded, interactive scientific graphing libraries (>50M downloads across supported languages)

    Please include the link to this issue when contacting us to discuss.

  11. gvwilson commented on Jun 5, 2024

    @gvwilson
    Contributor

    Hi - this issue has been sitting for a while, so as part of our effort to tidy up our public repositories I'm going to close it. If it's still a concern, we'd be grateful if you could open a new issue (with a short reproducible example if appropriate) so that we can add it to our stack. Cheers - @gvwilson

  12. rabyj commented on Apr 24, 2025

    @rabyj

    Is there any open issue still tracking this feature? This has been bugging me for years, working from the Python side.

    For reference, there is a workaround to have the normal IQR whiskers while not having boxpoints shown:
    marker: {opacity: 0}

  13. gvwilson commented on Apr 25, 2025

    @gvwilson
    Contributor

    there isn't, but I'll reopen this one - we're unlikely to get to it any time soon, but we'd be happy to prioritize review of a community PR. thanks - @gvwilson

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