Graphical and Numerical Descriptive Analysis: Exploratory Tools Applied to Vietnamese Data

Abstract

This case study covers several exploratory data analysis ideas, the histogram and boxplot, kernel density estimates, the recently introduced bagplot - a two-dimensional extension of the boxplot - as well as the violin plot, which combines a boxplot with a density shape plot. We apply these ideas and demonstrate how to interpret the output from these tools in the context of data on living standards in Vietnam. The level of the presentation is suitable for an upper-level undergraduate or beginning graduate course in applied statistics. We use data from the Vietnam Living Standards Survey of 1998 (VLSS98) and from the 2000 Vietnam statistical yearbook, the statistical package Stata, and special programs provided by the authors who introduced the bagplot and the violin plot.

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher's website.

• Bagplots
• Boxplots
• Histograms
• Kernel density estimators
• Vietnam Living Standards Surveys
• Violin plots

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Editor, Associate Editor, and three anonymous referees for their very careful reading of the paper, and their many useful comments.