Boxplot whisker changes when set "boxpoints" to false

[PPPW]

Dear plotly.js,
For boxplot, I saw a difference when "boxpoints" is set to "true" and "false", you can use the following example, comment out the "boxpoints" line to see the change:

https://codepen.io/anon/pen/XazgKw?editors=0010

The whisker position for "boxpoints = true" is correct and is what I want, it seems when "boxpoints = false", a different metric is used? Is it possible to fix the behavior? Thanks!

Best,

[alexcjohnson]

Two things:

• boxpoints has options 'all', 'outliers', 'suspectedoutliers', false - so true actually reverts to the default 'outliers'
• The algorithms we used to calculate the whiskers are consistent with, for example http://www.physics.csbsju.edu/stats/box2.html:

If either type of outlier is present the whisker on the appropriate side is taken to 1.5×IQR from the quartile (the "inner fence") rather than the max or min

ie if we're displaying outliers, the outliers show the min/max so the whiskers show what might be expected for a typical spread within the main distribution. But if we're NOT displaying outliers, it's useful to know what the full min/max of the distribution are - especially since the fence values are simply calculated from other metrics of the distribution that are already displayed.

I suppose we could add a mode like boxpoints: 'hidden' to omit outliers but not include them in the whiskers. A workaround is to include marker: {opacity: 0} in your trace, though if you do this the full max/min will still be included in the autorange (and hover, though I notice we have a problem with hover for horizontal boxes, we don't show all the information as we do for vertical boxes)

[PPPW]

@alexcjohnson

A workaround is to include marker: {opacity: 0} in your trace

Good idea, I can remove "boxpoints: false" and set the opacity to zero, it worked well for me. In my case, I'd like to hide points for boxplot, and add a scatter series to show the points, because I want the points to be selectable. Thank you!

[alexcjohnson]

I'm going to close this issue - I copied the interests expressed here in #277 which has even more generality - @PPPW feel free to chime in there if I missed anything - and the hover issue I noticed turns out to have been reported in #778