scatterplot improvement

Discuss the jamovi platform, possible improvements, etc.
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adil.saribay
Posts: 3
Joined: Sat Mar 06, 2021 9:48 pm

scatterplot improvement

Post by adil.saribay »

Hello all,

I've started teaching undergrad stats with jamovi and it's going pretty well and I'm generally very happy that my department has made the switch. I hope this is the right place to bring up a potential improvement.

I am teaching correlation this week and as far as I can see there is no easy way to produce a scatterplot matrix apart from the Correlation Matrix menu under Regression. But one can't remove the regression line and the error bars. The reason I would like to turn these off is because I don't want the students to get distracted, before they learn what these are. And in actual research, it's possible that one wants to display a scatterplot matrix without these elements.

There is also no way to get multiple scatterplots outside of this menu. I mean, if I wanted to produce multiple scatterplots at once (and not necessarily as a matrix, but just as separate images), I don't see any way. In JASP for instance, there is an option called "scatter plots" under descriptives that does this. And it's possible to turn off the regression line.

There is of course the scatr module but there, too, you have to drag the variables into the x- and y-axes and produce one scatterplot at a time. You can't select 5 variables and produce scatterplots for all possible pairs.

So, maybe this can be an improvement for scatterplots; i.e., being able to produce multiple separate scatterplots by selecting more than 2 variables at once and having the option to not have the regression line and error bars in such plots.

cheers!

P.S. the jjstatsplot module has just come to my attention but I think it has the same problem: No way to get multiple scatterplots from one menu. By the way, I'm not sure if we should refrain from making a feature/improvement request for core jamovi if there is already a module that has the requested feature/improvement. Is core jamovi trying to incorporate features found in modules or is the strategy more to let the community extend jamovi with these modules?
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jonathon
Posts: 2613
Joined: Fri Jan 27, 2017 10:04 am

Re: scatterplot improvement

Post by jonathon »

hi,
Is core jamovi trying to incorporate features found in modules or is the strategy more to let the community extend jamovi with these modules?
a bit of both. we like the community to extend with modules, and good ideas we like to fold back into jamovi core.

i think we'd like to improve the correlation matrix, at the moment we're using the ggally package, and we'd like to write something from scratch, but it's not a small undertaking, and the correlation matrix is in many ways "good enough".

the challenge is always striking a balance between providing lots of features, but not over-cluttering things. it's a delicate balancing act.

jonathon
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jonathon
Posts: 2613
Joined: Fri Jan 27, 2017 10:04 am

Re: scatterplot improvement

Post by jonathon »

but i think this illustrates a maxim in statistical software ... it doesn't matter what you provide, someone always wants something else :P

thanks for bringing this up.

jonathon
adil.saribay
Posts: 3
Joined: Sat Mar 06, 2021 9:48 pm

Re: scatterplot improvement

Post by adil.saribay »

It's only a suggestion of course and it may not make sense or the community may not like it overall. I'll love jamovi regardless :-)

I completely understand the importance of keeping the balance between feature-richness and ease-of-use. When I think of that, it makes sense that the core remains minimalist and uncluttered while the modules add whatever people want. A minimalist core makes it easier to teach stats at the most basic level. For that reason, maybe I should not make such improvement suggestions unless I'm super compelled.

Thanks for the reply Jon!
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0avasns
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Mar 18, 2024 12:46 pm

Re: scatterplot improvement

Post by 0avasns »

May I second this request?
Please, please, PLEASE remove the regression lines from the scatterplot matrix! It completely defeats the purpose of having scatterplots in the first place, because it distracts from the actual data distribution. At least please add a tick box so the regression lines are optional. Scatterplots are very useful for the kinds of analyses we commonly use in my department. As it is I have to ask my students to produce individual scatterplots manually, which sounds like a bit of a waste of time given that the correlation matrix option exists.
Pretty please?
Thanassi
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reason180
Posts: 274
Joined: Mon Jul 24, 2017 4:56 pm

Re: scatterplot improvement

Post by reason180 »

Look at this! :-)
Untitled84732643653.png
Untitled84732643653.png (54.31 KiB) Viewed 175 times
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0avasns
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Mar 18, 2024 12:46 pm

Re: scatterplot improvement

Post by 0avasns »

Looks perfect! Is this from Jamovi?
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reason180
Posts: 274
Joined: Mon Jul 24, 2017 4:56 pm

Re: scatterplot improvement

Post by reason180 »

@Oavasns

From jamovi, I exported the plot as an svg. I then pasted the svg image into PowerPoint, right-clicked the image, and selected "convert to shape". From there I simply deleted the unwanted elements of the image.

I notice that PowerPoint messed up the text in the margin. However, Excel does a better job (in Excel, you have to "insert" the svg rather than simply paste it).
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0avasns
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Mar 18, 2024 12:46 pm

Re: scatterplot improvement

Post by 0avasns »

Thanks so much for the workaround, I appreciate it!
I hope Jonathon will agree to add a tick box so that students won't have to go through all this process though :-)
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