Power BI Box and Whisker Chart

What is Power BI Box and Whisker Chart?

Power BI Box and Whisker chart is an effective data visualization tool to visualize your dataset graphically for basic statistical information. It allows you to perform a quick comparison of data distribution across different datasets. Using this chart, you can plot groups of numerical data through their quartiles. It broadly covers a key five-number summary that includes the mean, median, quartiles (1^st and 3^rd quartile), min, and max value of your dataset.

Hence, Power BI Box and Whisker charts are useful for performing statistical data analyses. Additionally, these charts also support the following features:

• Add static reference line(s)
• Option to show outliers and median/mean indicators
• Optional support for highlight and ‘Fixed Categories’
• Label formatting options, including font size and font family
• Option to enable data labels

Power BI Box and Whisker charts are not by default included in the Visualizations pane in Power BI Desktop. However, you can import these charts from the Microsoft Appsource application into Power BI and use them for data visualization.

Components

A sample Power BI Box and Whisker chart is provided below. Multiple dots on this chart represent individual data points.

Let’s understand the components of the Power BI Box and Whisker chart in detail.

• Dot Size, Legend, and Tooltips: Dot size represents the measure (E.g., Monthly Sales) and varies from smaller to bigger dots depending on the measure values. Similarly, you can color-code the dots based on certain conditions (E.g., Was there a promotion?) and apply customization in terms of choice of colors. You can use tooltips to enter any additional information you want to display when hovering the mouse over the visual.

• The Box: It represents the data that falls within 1^st quartile to 3^rd quartile range. Its vertical edges represent different quartile ranges. The top edge shows the 1^st quartile (Q1), the bottom edge represents the 3^rd quartile (Q3), and the entire length of the box is called the Interquartile range.

• The Whiskers: These represent the outer bounds of your data and by default, are calculated based on the minimum and maximum values of your data. There are multiple Whisker Types that include:
  • Min/Max – represent the minimum and maximum values in your dataset.
  • < 1.5 IQR – represents the largest data set number smaller than 1.5 times the inner quartile range.
  • 1.5 IQR – top and bottom whiskers set to 1.5 times the inner quartile range.
  • One Standard Deviation – the equivalent of one standard deviation away from the data.
  • Custom – custom percentile of your data.

• Outliers: It represents the data that falls outside the boundaries of upper and lower whiskers.

• Maximum: It is the largest value in the data, representing the 100th percentile in a box plot. Data falling outside of the maximum value is considered outliers.
• Minimum: The lowest value in the data representing the 0th percentile in a box plot. It’s the lower whisker of the box. Similar to Maximum, values falling below the minimum are considered outliers.
• Median: This is the line inside the box and represents the 2nd quartile, i.e., 50th percentile.
• Mean: This is the dot inside the box and represents the average value.

In the next section, we will see how you can plot a Power BI Box and Whisker chart.

How to plot Power BI Box and Whisker chart?

To plot a Box and Whisker chart in Power BI, follow these steps:

Step 1: Import the dataset into Power BI Desktop.

Step 2: Navigate to the Visualizations pane, click on the ellipsis (…), and choose Get more visuals.

Step 3: Search for Whisker in the search bar in the Appsource screen and choose the chart MAQ visual.

Step 4: Click on the Add button to import the Power BI Box and Whisker chart MAQ visual to Power BI Desktop. 

You can also click on Download sample to perform the chart download.

It will import the visual to your Power BI Desktop.

Step 5: Navigate to the Visualizations pane and select the Power BI Box and Whisker chart MAQ.

Step 6: Drag and drop the fields from the Data pane to the Category, Sampling, and Values section in the Visualizations pane.

Note the Power BI box and whisker chart sampling option are used to sample the dataset or create rows.

Step 7: Use the formatting options to customize the appearance of the chart.

Step 8: Once the chart is plotted in the report canvas, perform analysis to assess the distribution of the data and identify outliers and other statistical measures.

Examples

In this section, we will demonstrate the Power BI Box and Whisker chart through 3 different examples.

Example #1

In this example, we will demo a Box and Whisker chart in Power BI using Adidas US Sales Datasets data. Adidas US Sales Datasets contain information on the sales of Adidas products.

To plot a Power BI Box and Whisker chart, follow the instructions below:

Step 1: Import the Adidas US Sales Datasets in Power BI Desktop using the Get data option and load it into Power BI.

Step 2: Import the Power BI Box and Whisker chart MAQ visual into Power BI Desktop using the steps highlighted in the prior section.

Step 3: Drag and drop the data fields into Axis, Axis category I, Axis category II, and Value sections in the Visualizations pane.

Step 4: Navigate to the Format your visual tab and expand Box options. Select Whisker type as One Standard Deviation.

You can apply other customization options such as Title, Orientation, and the look and feel of the chart. Once these changes are applied, you will be able to view the Box and Whisker chart in the report canvas.

Example #2

In this example, we will plot the Power BI Box and Whisker chart with Min/Max Whisker type using the StudentsPerformance dataset. StudentsPerformance contains data comprising the marks secured by the students in various subjects.

To plot this chart, follow the instructions highlighted below:

Step 1: Import the StudentsPerformance dataset into Power BI using the Get data option. Click on Load to load data into Power BI.

Step 2: 

• Navigate to the Visualizations pane.
• Choose the Power BI Box and Whisker chart MAQ visual icon.
• Drag and drop the fields to the mapping sections.

Step 3: Apply formatting options to the chart. Here, we have plotted the Box and Whisker chart with Whisker type as Min/Max. To configure this option, navigate to Format your visual – Box options – Whisker type as Min/Max.

Step 4: Navigate to the General tab under Format your visual. Apply customization such as Title, Font, alignment, and other choices to your chart. You can apply color coding to your box. It will plot a Min/Max whisker chart in the report canvas.

Example #3

In this example, we will demo plotting of Box and Whisker chart with whisker type as 1.5 IQR using the ds_salaries dataset. The ds_salaries dataset contains the salaries of data scientists across different companies, roles, and years of experience.

To create a Power BI Box and Whisker chart, follow the steps outlined below.

Step 1: Import the ds_salaries dataset into and load it into the Power BI.

Step 2: Once the load is complete, navigate to the Visualizations pane, choose the Power BI Box and Whisker chart MAQ visual icon, and drag and drop the fields to the mapping sections.

Step 3: To plot the Whisker type as 1.5 IQR, navigate to Format your visual – Box options – Whisker type as 1.5 IQR.

You can also add additional information, such as mean and median, to be included in your chart by toggling on the sliders.

Step 4: Navigate to the General tab under Format your visual. Apply customization such as Font, color, alignment, title, and other configurations as per your requirements.

Once the changes are completed, you will see the Box and Whisker chart in your report canvas.

Importance

• Box and Whisker chart is extremely useful in performing data distribution analysis such as the spread of data distribution, i.e., interquartile range, and other statistical analyses, including calculation of central tendency of data.
• Identifying the data outliers, i.e., the extreme values in your dataset, is relatively easy. It, in turn, helps in data standardization and performance analysis by eliminating these outliers.
• This chart is handy when lots of data outliers skew your data as it provides different quartiles instead of only averages.
• The ability to compare across different groups using box plots can be advantageous, especially for data trends analysis.
• You can perform user interactions such as drill down and tooltips to provide additional information.

Important Things to Note

• Power BI Box and Whisker chart contain several statistical information and one needs to have a good understanding of those concepts such as quartile, mean, median, etc.
• While these charts are useful for analysis, any data quality issues or missing values may significantly impact the output of the chart.
• Box and Whisker charts are easy to interpret for statistical information and have relatively simple graphics and an intuitive interface. 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Recommended Articles

This has been a guide to Power BI Box and Whisker Chart. Here we explain how to plot it chart in Power BI, with examples, components, and points to remember. You may learn more from the following articles –

• Power BI Radar Chart
• Power BI Funnel Chart
• Power BI Ribbon Chart