Talk:Stem-and-leaf plot

WP Confusing

After trying to implement something, I thought the WP article to be less than helpful. How about basing the task on this? --Paddy3118 07:32, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Agreed that the WP article is confusing (perhaps one of us ought to improve it!) but I think I've extracted the key part to make the Tcl solution. It even handles signed fractional data, should that be presented. I think it is easier to convert the data to stems and leaves and store in a map (from stems to a sequence of leaves) before sorting any of it. Or at least that was what made sense to me. –Donal Fellows 09:37, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Short question aside: How should missing stems be handled? One example on your page lists stems without leaves in between the stems that have leaves. For An overview of the data distribution this is certainly of value but it can make the plot needlessly long. Maybe it should be clarified whether stems without leaves should be represented in the output or not. —Johannes Rössel 14:12, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

As WP says: "It is important that each stem is listed only once and that no numbers are skipped, even if it means that some stems have no leaves." This ensures that the vertical direction is always a linear scale. This is not just a table: it is an information graphic. Distances matter. —Kevin Reid 14:42, 14 December 2009 (UTC)