Topic Guides

What pliffy is (and what it isn’t)

pliffy is a simple plotting tool that addresses an important gap in the statistical plotting landscape. It generates difference plots for paired or unpaired data. Despite the simplicity of these plots, they have served its core contributor well for several years. The original version of pliffy was created in January 2017, a time when difference plots were not common in the published literature.

It is hoped that this revised version of pliffy can help students and researchers produce simple, clear and informative figures.

Alternatives to pliffy

pliffy plots were inspired by the work of Geoff Cumming. Geoff originally generated his difference plots in Excel with the help of macros, a framework he called ESCI. Since then, his co-author Robert Calin-Jageman has published this statistical estimation-based framework in R as the ESCI module for Jamovi.

The other alternative is to pliffy is DABEST-python. As stated in the README.md, DABEST stands for Data Analysis using Bootstrap-Coupled ESTimation. It offers a wider variety of difference plots, all based on bootstap estimates.