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\begin{document}

\title{Sea stack plots: replacing bar charts with histograms}



\author[1]{Alice Stuart}%
\author[2]{Maja Ilić}%
\author[3]{Benno Simmons}%
\author[4]{William Sutherland}%
\affil[1]{University of East Anglia}%
\affil[2]{Queen's University Belfast}%
\affil[3]{University of Exeter Centre for Ecology and Conservation}%
\affil[4]{University of Cambridge}%


\vspace{-1em}



  
  \date{May 18, 2024}


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\begin{abstract}
1. Graphs in research articles can increase the comprehension of
statistical data but may mislead readers if poorly designed. Previous
literature has found that the two most frequently used plot types - bar
charts and dot and whisker plots - are a poor way to represent data
because they only show the summary statistics of data, not their
distribution, potentially hiding important information.

2. Calls have been made encouraging abandonment of bar charts and the
use of more informative plot types, such as boxplots, violin plots,
univariate scatter plots, and dot plots. We compare these plot types to
assess their relative strengths and weaknesses to represent four
different distributions of the data commonly observed in biological
studies, finding that all the assessed plot types are either difficult
to read at large sample sizes or misrepresent certain distributions of
data.

3. We present an analysis of the plot types used in four ecology and
conservation journals covering multiple areas of these research fields,
finding widespread use of uninformative bar charts and dot and whisker
plots (60 \% of all plots showing one-dimensional data from multiple
groups for the purpose of comparison). Some articles presented more
informative figures by combining plot types, generally boxplots and a
second layer such as a flat violin plot, to better display the data.
This shows an appetite for more effective plot types within conservation
and ecology, which may further increase if an accurate and user-friendly
plot types were made available.

4. In response to this, we propose sea stack plots, which combine
vertical histograms and summary statistics, and allow for an accurate
representation of different data distributions, thereby largely
overcoming the weaknesses associated with other alternatives to
uninformative plots. We provide a tool to create sea stack plots with
our R package `seastackplot', available through GitHub.%
\end{abstract}%



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\textbf{Hosted file}

\verb`sea_stack_plots_manuscript_to_submit.docx`  available at \url{https://authorea.com/users/675000/articles/673135-sea-stack-plots-replacing-bar-charts-with-histograms}

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