Solved – Is the convention for error bars to present one or two standard errors

data visualizationstandard error

I am plotting error bars in ggplot2 with geom_bar and geom_errorbar. geom_errorbar asks for ymin and ymax aesthetics. If I want the error bars to be std errors, is the convention to have ymax = mean_value + standard_error and ymin = mean_value - standard_error, or is it ymax = mean_value + (1/2)*standard_error and similarly for ymin?

My question is essentially: Is the length of the bar equal to 2*stderr or to stderr?

Best Answer

To me the best default approach is to always use confidence intervals, using methods that recognize that the intervals should usually be asymmetric. Use of $\pm k\times$SE implies symmetry that doesn't hold when the underlying data distribution is very asymmetric.

If you want to show data distributions rather than precision of estimates of central tendency, then plotting the 0.25 and 0.75 quantiles along with the median often work well.