# The BoxWhisker Plot

The BoxWhisker Plot is a view designed to let you compare the distribution of probe values across several data stores, or several probe lists across a single data store.

To create a BoxWhisker plot select Plots > Box Whisker Plot from the main menu. You can then choose whether you want the plot to show all visible data stores for the currently active probe list or whether you want to select a set of probe lists to plot for the currently active data store. The plot window will appear immediately and the individual plots will appear as they are calculated. This may take a few seconds for larger data sets.

The boxwhisker plot shows several different pieces of information.

1. The line across the middle of the yellow box shows the median
2. The upper and lower extremities of the yellow box show the 25th and 75th percentile of the set of data
3. The upper and lower black whiskers show the median plus/minus the interquartile (25-75%) range multiplied by 2
4. Any individual points which fall outside this range are shown as filled circles. Each circle represents a single probe.

Where multiple plots are drawn they will all be placed onto the same scale so you can quickly compare between them.

Within the BoxWhisker plot menu you can choose to plot either:

- One probe list against the currently visible set of DataStores
- The currently active data store against a selected set of probe lists
- A set of probe lists against the currently visible data stores (in this case you can choose within the plot if the data stores or the probe lists go on the x-axis)

If you want to extract the list of outliers from the boxwhisker plot you can use the BoxWhisker Filter to pull them out as a probe list.