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Figure 1 | Error bar width and interpretation of spacing depends on the error bar type. (a,b) Example graphs are based on sample means of 0 and 1 (n =10). (a) When bars are scaled to the same size and abut, P values span a wide range. When s.e.m. bars touch, P is large (P =0.17). (b) Bar size and relative position vary greatly at the conventional P value significance cutoff of 0.05, at which bars may overlap or have a gap.

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Figure 1 | Error bar width and interpretation of spacing depends on the error bar type. (a,b) Example graphs are based on sample means of 0 and 1 (n =10). (a) When bars are scaled to the same size and abut, P values span a wide range. When s.e.m. bars touch, P is large (P =0.17). (b) Bar size and relative position vary greatly at the conventional P value significance cutoff of 0.05, at which bars may overlap or have a gap.
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/110/331/657/492/570/561/original/fcb546b8e16a42d2.png

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Carl T. Bergstrom (ct_bergstrom@fediscience.org)'s status on Monday, 08-May-2023 06:38:06 UTC Carl T. Bergstrom

It sounds trivial and obvious, but are you reading error bars correctly?
Do you know whether you're looking at standard errors (measures of inferential uncertainty), standard deviations (measures of spread of individual observations), or 95% confidence intervals around the mean?
And are your intuitions about what each of these mean correct?
Here's a nice primer, refresher, or teaching article.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nmeth.2659
h/t @jakehofman

In conversation Monday, 08-May-2023 06:38:06 UTC from fediscience.org permalink