Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Mathematics/2013 May 8

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May 8

Four scatter plots with same mean, standard deviation and other equalities

Hi all, I recall coming across an article on Wiki showing four scatter plots that all look vastly different, but they have a number of things in common, such as the mean in x and y directions, same standard deviations, same linear correlation, same linear line of best fit, etc.

It was an example of why it's important to actually graph data and visually inspect it.

Can anyone point me to that article?

Thanks. - Akamad (talk) 15:12, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

See Anscombe's quartet. --Wrongfilter (talk) 15:14, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

There's a similar picture at correlation, showing several different plots with the same correlation. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:58, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks guys/gals. That was exactly what I was looking for. SemanticMantis, the plots shown on that page are actually the same ones that I was looking for. - Akamad (talk) 07:22, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Glad we could help! I actually forgot the name of Anscombe's quartet (which illustrates a deeper point), so I learned something too :) SemanticMantis (talk) 15:02, 9 May 2013 (UTC)