Box-Whisker Plots on TI-83/84
Copyright © 2012–2023 by Stan Brown, BrownMath.com
Copyright © 2012–2023 by Stan Brown, BrownMath.com
Summary: You can use your TI-83/84 to create a box-whisker diagram, also known as a boxplot. Boxplots give you a general idea of the shape of the data, particularly its skew, and they highlight outliers in the data set.
Let’s make a boxplot of this data set:
11 | 15 | 14 | 12 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 5 | 6 | 11 |
10 | 10.5 | 12 | 11 | 13 | 2 | 6 | 4 | 13.5 | 22 |
Enter the data points. | ![]() STAT ] [1 ] selects the list-edit screen.
Cursor onto the label L1 at top of first
column, then [CLEAR ] [ENTER ] erases the list.
Enter the x values. (The order doesn’t matter.) |
In this step, you disable any other plots and graphs that could overlay your box-whisker plot.
![]() Y= ] to open the list of equations and plots. | |
Look at the plots across the top, and look at the column of = signs. If any are enabled (highlighted), disable them. | ![]() ENTER ] to remove the highlight.
Caution! There are ten equations. Use [ ▼ ] to
scroll down and check them all, down to Y0. |
Clear the grid and enable coordinate display for later use in tracing. | ![]() 2nd ZOOM makes FORMAT ].
If GridOn is highlighted, press [ ▼ 3 times ] [ENTER ].
If CoordOff is highlighted, use the [ ▼ ] or [▲ ] key to get to
CoordOn, and press [ENTER ]. |
Select Plot1. | Press [2nd Y= makes STAT PLOT ] [ENTER ]. |
Select the modified box-whisker plot. | Press [▼ ] [► 3 times ] [ENTER ] [▼ ].
The bottom part of the screen may change when you do this. |
Select list 1, frequency 1, and squares for outliers. | ![]() 2nd 1 makes L1 ] [ENTER ].
Freq is probably already set to 1. If it is, press [ ENTER ]. If it’s not 1, press
[ALPHA ] [1 ] [ENTER ]. |
On the box-whisker diagram, any outliers show as isolated squares. The whiskers are mix and max (disregarding any outliers), and the box is first quartile, median, and third quartile. | ![]() ZOOM ] [9 ], which is ZoomStat or “zoom to
statistics”. |
![]() TRACE ]. Use [◄ ] and
[► ] to display the numbers in the five-number
summary as well as any outliers. |
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