[Tex/LaTex] use pgfplots to make a boxplot

boxplotpgfplots

My current plotting tool for my papers is pgfplots for nice consistent plots. Now I would like to add a boxplot. Is this possible with help of pgfplots, or any helper package?

Best Answer

PGFPlots supports boxplots natively as of version 1.8 See Boxplot in LaTeX for an example.

The remainder of this answer should be considered obsolete.

There is a much improved version of this code at Simpler boxplots in pgfplots - is this possible?. It allows creating box plots with a single command, and adds much more flexibility to the data format and the plot styles:

Original answer:

Not out of the box, and you'd have to do the quantile calculations outside of PGFplots, but then you can draw box plots with a bit of style trickery.

This code

\begin{axis} [enlarge x limits=0.5,xtick=data]
    \addplot [box plot median] table {testdata.dat};
    \addplot [box plot box] table {testdata.dat};
    \addplot [box plot top whisker] table {testdata.dat};
    \addplot [box plot bottom whisker] table {testdata.dat};
\end{axis}

can generate this plot

box plots with pgfplots

if testdata.dat is of the form

index median box_top box_bottom whisker_top whisker_bottom

Here's a full compilable example:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\usepackage{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents}{testdata.dat}
0 1 1.2 0.4 1.5 0.2
1 2 2.3 1.5 2.7 1
2 0.7 1.4 0.5 1.9 0.1
\end{filecontents}

\pgfplotsset{
    box plot/.style={
        /pgfplots/.cd,
        black,
        only marks,
        mark=-,
        mark size=1em,
        /pgfplots/error bars/.cd,
        y dir=plus,
        y explicit,
    },
    box plot box/.style={
        /pgfplots/error bars/draw error bar/.code 2 args={%
            \draw  ##1 -- ++(1em,0pt) |- ##2 -- ++(-1em,0pt) |- ##1 -- cycle;
        },
        /pgfplots/table/.cd,
        y index=2,
        y error expr={\thisrowno{3}-\thisrowno{2}},
        /pgfplots/box plot
    },
    box plot top whisker/.style={
        /pgfplots/error bars/draw error bar/.code 2 args={%
            \pgfkeysgetvalue{/pgfplots/error bars/error mark}%
            {\pgfplotserrorbarsmark}%
            \pgfkeysgetvalue{/pgfplots/error bars/error mark options}%
            {\pgfplotserrorbarsmarkopts}%
            \path ##1 -- ##2;
        },
        /pgfplots/table/.cd,
        y index=4,
        y error expr={\thisrowno{2}-\thisrowno{4}},
        /pgfplots/box plot
    },
    box plot bottom whisker/.style={
        /pgfplots/error bars/draw error bar/.code 2 args={%
            \pgfkeysgetvalue{/pgfplots/error bars/error mark}%
            {\pgfplotserrorbarsmark}%
            \pgfkeysgetvalue{/pgfplots/error bars/error mark options}%
            {\pgfplotserrorbarsmarkopts}%
            \path ##1 -- ##2;
        },
        /pgfplots/table/.cd,
        y index=5,
        y error expr={\thisrowno{3}-\thisrowno{5}},
        /pgfplots/box plot
    },
    box plot median/.style={
        /pgfplots/box plot
    }
}

\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{axis} [enlarge x limits=0.5,xtick=data]
    \addplot [box plot median] table {testdata.dat};
    \addplot [box plot box] table {testdata.dat};
    \addplot [box plot top whisker] table {testdata.dat};
    \addplot [box plot bottom whisker] table {testdata.dat};
\end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}
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