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Basic Analysis > Distributions > Options for Continuous Variables
Publication date: 04/21/2023

Options for Continuous Variables

The red triangle menus next to each variable in the report window contain additional options that apply to the variable. This section describes the options that are available for continuous variables.

Display Options

See Display Options for Continuous Variables.

Histogram Options

See Histogram Options for Continuous Variables.

Normal Quantile Plot

Helps you visualize the extent to which the variable is normally distributed. See Normal Quantile Plot.

Outlier Box Plot

Shows the distribution and helps you identify possible outliers. See Outlier Box Plot.

Quantile Box Plot

Shows specific quantiles from the Quantiles report. See Quantile Box Plot.

Stem and Leaf

See Stem and Leaf.

CDF Plot

Creates a plot of the empirical cumulative distribution function. See CDF Plot.

Test Mean

Perform a one-sample test for the mean. See Test Mean.

Test Std Dev

Perform a one-sample test for the standard deviation. See Test Std Dev.

Test Equivalence

Assesses whether a population mean is equivalent to a hypothesized value. See Test Equivalence.

Confidence Interval

Choose confidence intervals for the mean and standard deviation. See Confidence Intervals.

Prediction Interval

Choose prediction intervals for a single observation, or for the mean and standard deviation of the next randomly selected sample. See Prediction Intervals.

Tolerance Interval

Computes an interval to contain at least a specified proportion of the population. See Tolerance Intervals.

Process Capability

(Not available when the Y column has a Detection Limits column property.) Measures the conformance of a process to given specification limits. See Process Capability.

Note: If the Y column has a Detection Limits column property, process capability analyses are available only from the fitted distribution red triangle menus. See Process Capability.

Continuous Fit

Fits distributions to continuous variables. If the Y column has a Detection Limits column property, the Continuous Fit options fit a censored distribution and only a subset of distributions are available. See Fit Distributions.

Discrete Fit

(Available when all data values are integers.) Fits distributions to discrete variables. See Fit Distributions.

Save

Saves information about continuous or categorical variables. See Save Options for Continuous Variables.

Remove

Permanently removes the variable and all its reports from the Distribution report.

Display Options for Continuous Variables

Quantiles

Shows or hides the Quantiles report. See The Quantiles Report.

Set Quantile Increment

Changes the quantile increment or revert to the default quantile increment.

Custom Quantiles

Sets custom quantiles by values or by increments. You can specify the confidence level and choose whether to compute smoothed empirical likelihood quantiles (for large data sets, this can take some time).

For more information about how the weighted average quantiles are estimated, see Statistical Details for Quantiles.

For more information about distribution-free confidence limits for the weighted average quantiles, see section 5.2 in Meeker et al. (2017).

Smoothed empirical likelihood quantiles are based on a kernel density estimate. For more information about how these quantiles and their confidence limits are estimated, see Chen and Hall (1993).

Confidence intervals and smoothed empirical likelihood quantiles are not available when fractional frequencies are used.

Summary Statistics

Shows or hides the Summary Statistics report. See The Summary Statistics Report.

Customize Summary Statistics

Adds or removes statistics from the Summary Statistics report. See The Summary Statistics Report.

Horizontal Layout

Changes the orientation of the histogram and the reports to vertical or horizontal.

Axes on Left

Moves the Count, Prob, Density, and Normal Quantile Plot axes to the left instead of the right.

This option is applicable only if Horizontal Layout is selected.

Histogram Options for Continuous Variables

Histogram

Shows or hides the histogram. See Histograms.

Shadowgram

Replaces the histogram with a shadowgram. To understand a shadowgram, consider that if the bin width of a histogram is changed, the appearance of the histogram changes. A shadowgram overlays histograms with different bin widths. Dominant features of a distribution are less transparent on the shadowgram.

Note that the following options are not available for shadowgrams:

Std Error Bars

Show Counts

Show Percents

Vertical

Changes the orientation of the histogram from a vertical to a horizontal orientation.

Std Error Bars

Draws the standard error bar on each level of the histogram using the standard error. The standard error bar adjusts automatically when you adjust the number of bars with the hand tool. See Resize Histogram Bars for Continuous Variables and Statistical Details for Standard Error Bars.

Set Bin Width

Changes the bin width of the histogram bars. See Resize Histogram Bars for Continuous Variables.

Histogram Color

Changes the color of the histogram bars.

Count Axis

Adds an axis that shows the frequency of column values represented by the histogram bars.

Note: If you resize the histogram bars, the count axis also resizes.

Prob Axis

Adds an axis that shows the proportion of column values represented by histogram bars.

Note: If you resize the histogram bars, the probability axis also resizes.

Density Axis

The density is the length of the bars in the histogram. Both the count and probability are based on the following calculations:

prob = (bar width)*density

count = (bar width)*density*(total count)

When looking at density curves that are added by the Fit Distribution option, the density axis shows the point estimates of the curves.

Note: If you resize the histogram bars, the density axis also resizes.

Show Percents

Labels the proportion of column values represented by each histogram bar.

Show Counts

Labels the frequency of column values represented by each histogram bar.

Want more information? Have questions? Get answers in the JMP User Community (community.jmp.com).