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Seaborn is a data visualization library in Python that allows users to create informative and visually appealing plots. One of its features is the ability to display the mean value on a boxplot. A boxplot is a graphical representation of numerical data through quartiles, median, and outliers. To display the mean value on a boxplot using Seaborn, the user can use the “showmeans” parameter in the boxplot function. This will add a marker or line at the mean value of the data, providing additional insight and understanding of the data distribution. By incorporating the mean value into a boxplot, it becomes a more comprehensive and informative visualization tool for data analysis.
Seaborn: Display Mean Value on Boxplot
You can use the showmeans argument to display the mean value in boxplots created using seaborn:
sns.boxplot(data=df, x='x_var', y='y_var', showmeans=True)
The following example shows how to use this syntax in practice.
Example: Display Mean Value on Seaborn Boxplot
Suppose we have the following pandas DataFrame that shows the points scored by basketball players on three different teams:
import pandas as pd #create DataFrame df = pd.DataFrame({'team': ['A', 'A', 'A', 'A', 'A', 'B', 'B', 'B', 'B', 'B', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C', 'C'], 'points': [3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 13, 16, 18, 20, 8, 9, 12, 13, 15]}) #view head of DataFrame print(df.head()) team points 0 A 3 1 A 4 2 A 6 3 A 8 4 A 9
We can use the following code to create boxplots to visualize the distribution of points for each team:
import seaborn as sns
#create boxplot to visualize points distribution by team
sns.boxplot(data=df, x='team', y='points')

By default, the boxplots display the median value using a horizontal line inside each boxplot.
To display the mean value for each boxplot, you must specify showmeans=True:
import seaborn as sns
#create boxplot to visualize points distribution by team (and display mean values)
sns.boxplot(data=df, x='team', y='points', showmeans=True)
By default, seaborn uses green triangles to display the mean value for each boxplot.
To customize the appearance of the mean value, feel free to use the meanprops argument:
import seaborn as sns
#create boxplot to visualize points distribution by team
sns.boxplot(data=df, x='team', y='points', showmeans=True,
meanprops={'marker':'o',
'markerfacecolor':'white',
'markeredgecolor':'black',
'markersize':'8'})
Feel free to play around with the values in the meanprops argument to modify the appearance of the mean values in the boxplots.
Note: You can find the complete documentation for the seaborn boxplot() function .
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common functions in seaborn:
Cite this article
stats writer (2024). How can I display the mean value on a boxplot using Seaborn?. PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES. Retrieved from https://scales.arabpsychology.com/stats/how-can-i-display-the-mean-value-on-a-boxplot-using-seaborn/
stats writer. "How can I display the mean value on a boxplot using Seaborn?." PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES, 25 Jun. 2024, https://scales.arabpsychology.com/stats/how-can-i-display-the-mean-value-on-a-boxplot-using-seaborn/.
stats writer. "How can I display the mean value on a boxplot using Seaborn?." PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES, 2024. https://scales.arabpsychology.com/stats/how-can-i-display-the-mean-value-on-a-boxplot-using-seaborn/.
stats writer (2024) 'How can I display the mean value on a boxplot using Seaborn?', PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES. Available at: https://scales.arabpsychology.com/stats/how-can-i-display-the-mean-value-on-a-boxplot-using-seaborn/.
[1] stats writer, "How can I display the mean value on a boxplot using Seaborn?," PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES, vol. X, no. Y, ص Z-Z, June, 2024.
stats writer. How can I display the mean value on a boxplot using Seaborn?. PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES. 2024;vol(issue):pages.
