Graphs in statistical analysis: Is the medium the message?

In an influential article in the February 1973 issue of The American Statis tician Frank Anscombe remarked that "[m]ost textbooks on statistical method s, and most statistical computer programs, pay too little attention to grap hs." This general observation no longer holds. Graphs of data are everywher e. Our children learn to draw and use bar charts in kindergarten and boxplo ts in the elementary grades; most newspapers and magazines regularly use gr aphical representation of data, and nearly all books on statistical methods use graphs. Graphs can be drawn in statistical packages, in spreadsheet pr ograms, and in stand-alone graphics packages. Statisticians often bemoan th e poor construction of the graphs produced, but even when the construction is adequate, graphs can be of little value. In this article, we argue that useful graphs must have a context induced by associated theory, and that a graph without the well-understood statistical context is hardly worth drawi ng.