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Points of Significance

Error bars

Nature Methods volume 10, pages 921–922 (2013)Cite this article

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The meaning of error bars is often misinterpreted, as is the statistical significance of their overlap.

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Figure 1: Error bar width and interpretation of spacing depends on the error bar type.
Figure 2: The size and position of confidence intervals depend on the sample.
Figure 3: Size and position of s.e.m. and 95% CI error bars for common P values.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Martin Krzywinski is a staff scientist at Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre.,

    Martin Krzywinski

  2. Naomi Altman is a Professor of Statistics at The Pennsylvania State University.,

    Naomi Altman

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  1. Martin Krzywinski
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  2. Naomi Altman
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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Table 1

Examples and sample calculations spreadsheet. Please note that the workbook requires that macros be enabled. (XLSM 148 kb)

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Krzywinski, M., Altman, N. Error bars. Nat Methods 10, 921–922 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.2659

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