Quartiles, Boxes, and Whiskers

My first step is to order the values in this set of numbers, going from least to greatest. This gives me the following ordered list:

The first value I need to find from this ordered list is the median of the entire set. Since there are seventeen values in this list, the ninth value is the middle value of the list, and is therefore my median:

The median is Q₂ = 4.4

The next two numbers I need are the medians of the two halves. Since I used the "4.4" in the middle of the list, I can't re-use it, so my two remaining data sets are:

...and:

The first half has eight values, so the median is the average of the middle two values:

The median of the second half is:

To draw my box-and-whisker plot, I'll need to decide on a scale for my measurements. Since the values in my list are written with one decimal place and range from 3.9 to 5.1, I won't use a scale of, say, zero to ten, marked off by ones. Instead, I'll draw a number line from 3.5 to 5.5, and mark off by tenths.

(You might choose to measure from, say, 3 to 6. Your choice would be as good as mine. The idea here is to be "reasonable", which allows you some flexibility; and to label clearly, so the grader knows what you mean.)

Now I'll mark off the minimum and maximum values, and Q₁, Q₂, and Q₃:

The "box" part of the plot goes from Q₁ to Q₃, with a line drawn inside the box to indicate the location of the median, Q₂:

And then the "whiskers" are drawn to the endpoints:

If you've got a wide box and long whiskers, then maybe the data doesn't cluster as you'd hoped (or at least not as you'd assumed). If your box is small and the whiskers are short, then probably your data does indeed cluster. If your box is small and the whiskers are long, then maybe the data clusters, but you've got some "outliers" that you might need to investigate further — or, as we'll see later, you may want to discard some of your results.

My first step is to order the data:

Next, I'll find the median. This set has seven values, so the fourth value is the median:

The median splits the remaining data into two sets. The first set is 77, 82, 83. The median of this set is:

The other set is 87, 88, 98. The median of this set is:

I now have all the values I need for my box-and-whisker plot. Next, I need to figure out what sort of scale I'll use for this.

Since all the values are two-digit whole numbers, I won't bother with decimal places. Because the extreme values (that is, the smallest and largest values) are 77 and 98 (twenty-two units apart), I'll use 75 to 100 for min and max values, and I'll count by two's for my scale.

(There's nothing special about these values; they're just what feel reasonable to me at the time of writing. Your choices may differ. Just don't go using something silly like 50 to 150 or 76.5 to 98.1.)

My set-up looks like this:

The crooked portion at the bottom of the vertical axis indicates that there is a portion of the number-line that's been omitted. In other words, this notation makes clear that the units for the vertical axis do not start from zero.

(This zig-zag portion of the axis appears generally to go by the name "zig-zag" or "break". If there's a proper term for this notation, I haven't found it yet. The closest thing to a "standard" term for this sort of plot appears to be "a broken-axis graph". I call the squiggly part of the axis "the hicky-bob thing".)

Affiliate

My next step is to draw the lines for the median (which is Q₂) and the two sub-medians (being the other quartiles, Q₁ and Q₃), as well as the two extremes:

Then I draw vertical lines to form my box and my whiskers: