Graphics Card Reviews: Why not use a boxplot

[Snyder]

While skimming the net for evil R600 NDA busters, a thought struck me:
Why has no one ever used a boxplot for displaying benchmark data? It would be more informative than a simple min/max/avg and more concise than a fps graph.

Has someone here tried it already and discarded the idea for (possibly obvious) reasons?
Or am I going to get unbelievably rich by patenting the idea and licensing it to review websites?


Oh - and "people won't get it" doesn't count!

 

[Razor1]

well you answered your question a boxplot its harder to just read the number and go on, a reader will actually have to do some thinking

 

[poopypoo]

Ironically, when amdmobo did a big cpu fan review a few years back , i suggested this very thing and they basically said "you do it". So, I did it, and i was slightly dismayed to find out how sucky the software for box plotting was -- mainly, it was all very ugly. In the future i'd probably do the whole thing in photoshop and have it at least look nice if it would be a pita, but really it wasn't so awful. it wasn't as readable as a bar graph but it was a helluva lot more informative. I think the basic answer to our question seems to be, reviewers are too swamped as is (or, in some cases, lazy -- i'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to create a good system for creating boxplots quickly) + their readers are not very into box plots, so the payoff for the extra work is questionable.

 

[Pete]

There was a big discussion about the best graphs/plots for reviews a while back, and I'm sure a box plot was mentioned. It'd be nice to find the link, if only to propose it for the Hall of Fame.

 

[rendezvous]

I generally agree that a boxplot would be better than the average solution (for me atleadt).
I wouldn't think it would be that much worse to read than a bar plot for many. (Not saying that we should throw bar plots with average values, becouse I understand that there are alot of people that will find boxplots difficult to read)

There was a big discussion about the best graphs/plots for reviews a while back, and I'm sure a box plot was mentioned. It'd be nice to find the link, if only to propose it for the Hall of Fame.

Is it this thread?
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=24454&highlight=box+plot

It brings up some intreresting discussions, such as boxplots, ploting culumative distribution of FPS, giving the number of frames below a certain threshould. I find all of these valuable. The perfect solution would be to give the readers the ability to chose beween all the the types plots becouse each plot has their own own advantages and disadvantages.

There was a link in that thread that I suggest that you read the first page of, where a method using a threshold value to give scores of how well a game plays on a fiive grade score is discussed. http://www.silentpcreview.com/article268-page1.html

 

[Snyder]

Is it this thread?
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=24454&highlight=box+plot

OMG! I even mentioned it in that thread...

The boxplot is an intriguing compromise. Accomodating outliers is an especially nice touch, as I'm never sure if min framerates are isolated instances or indicative of repeated lows.

That's one of the major reasons I often think boxplots would be nice, in addition to the box showing at a glance how stable the framerate is.