Sea stack plots: Replacing bar charts with histograms

Stuart, Alice Dorothy, Ilić, Maja, Simmons, Benno I. and Sutherland, William J. (2024) Sea stack plots: Replacing bar charts with histograms. Ecology and Evolution, 14 (4). ISSN 2045-7758

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Abstract

Graphs in research articles can increase the comprehension of statistical data but may mislead readers if poorly designed. We propose a new plot type, the sea stack plot, which combines vertical histograms and summary statistics to represent large univariate datasets accurately, usefully, and efficiently. We compare five commonly used plot types (dot and whisker plots, boxplots, density plots, univariate scatter plots, and dot plots) to assess their relative strengths and weaknesses when representing distributions of data commonly observed in biological studies. We find the assessed plot types are either difficult to read at large sample sizes or have the potential to misrepresent certain distributions of data, showing the need for an improved method of data visualisation. 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 panels showing univariate data from multiple groups for the purpose of comparison). Some articles presented more informative figures by combining plot types (16% of panels), generally boxplots and a second layer such as a flat density plot, to better display the data. This shows an appetite for more effective plot types within conservation and ecology, which may further increase if accurate and user-friendly plot types were made available. Finally, we describe sea stack plots and explain how they overcome the weaknesses associated with other alternatives to uninformative plots when used for large and/or unevenly distributed data. We provide a tool to create sea stack plots with our R package ‘seastackplot’, available through GitHub.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Data Availability Statement: All codes that are used to create dummy data for plots are included in Appendix A. The code used to create the plots in this article and data on plot use are available as Supporting Information alongside the article. Funding information: AS is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council and ARIES DTP [grant number NE/S007334/1] in CASE partnership with Anglian Water Services Ltd; MI is funded by Science Foundation Ireland and the Department for the Economy, Northern Ireland [grant number 15/IA/2881]; BIS is funded by a Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 Research Fellowship; and WJS is funded by Arcadia, MAVA and The David and Claudia Harding Foundation. This publication has emanated from research supported in part by a Grant from Science Foundation Ireland [grant number 15/IA/2881]. We thank Chris du Feu for comments.
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	11 Mar 2025 14:30
Last Modified:	28 Mar 2025 13:14
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/98733
DOI:	10.1002/ece3.11237

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