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Beyond differences in means: robust graphical methods to compare two groups in neuroscience

View ORCID ProfileGuillaume A. Rousselet, View ORCID ProfileCyril R. Pernet, View ORCID ProfileRand R. Wilcox
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/121079
Guillaume A. Rousselet
1Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology, College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow, 58 Hillhead Street, G12 8QB, Glasgow, UK
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  • For correspondence: Guillaume.Rousselet@glasgow.ac.uk
Cyril R. Pernet
2Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences, Neuroimaging Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Chancellor’s Building, Edinburgh EH16 4SB, UK
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Rand R. Wilcox
3Dept. of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-1061, USA
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Abstract

If many changes are necessary to improve the quality of neuroscience research, one relatively simple step could have great pay-offs: to promote the adoption of detailed graphical methods, combined with robust inferential statistics. Here we illustrate how such methods can lead to a much more detailed understanding of group differences than bar graphs and t-tests on means. To complement the neuroscientist’s toolbox, we present two powerful tools that can help us understand how groups of observations differ: the shift function and the difference asymmetry function. These tools can be combined with detailed visualisations to provide complementary perspectives about the data. We provide implementations in R and Matlab of the graphical tools, and all the examples in the article can be reproduced using R scripts.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
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Posted May 16, 2017.
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Beyond differences in means: robust graphical methods to compare two groups in neuroscience
Guillaume A. Rousselet, Cyril R. Pernet, Rand R. Wilcox
bioRxiv 121079; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/121079
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Beyond differences in means: robust graphical methods to compare two groups in neuroscience
Guillaume A. Rousselet, Cyril R. Pernet, Rand R. Wilcox
bioRxiv 121079; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/121079

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