A General Approach to Visualizing Uncertainty in Statistical Graphics

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Petek, Bernarda, Nabergoj, David, Štrumbelj, Erik
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Petek, Bernarda
Nabergoj, David
Štrumbelj, Erik
author_facet Petek, Bernarda
Nabergoj, David
Štrumbelj, Erik
contents We present a general approach to visualizing uncertainty in static 2-D statistical graphics. If we treat a visualization as a function of its underlying quantities, uncertainty in those quantities induces a distribution over images. We show how to aggregate these images into a single visualization that represents the uncertainty. The approach can be viewed as a generalization of sample-based approaches that use overlay. Notably, standard representations, such as confidence intervals and bands, emerge with their usual coverage guarantees without being explicitly quantified or visualized. As a proof of concept, we implement our approach in the IID setting using resampling, provided as an open-source Python library. Because the approach operates directly on images, the user needs only to supply the data and the code for visualizing the quantities of interest without uncertainty. Through several examples, we show how both familiar and novel forms of uncertainty visualization can be created. The implementation is not only a practical validation of the underlying theory but also an immediately usable tool that can complement existing uncertainty-visualization libraries.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_00937
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A General Approach to Visualizing Uncertainty in Statistical Graphics
Petek, Bernarda
Nabergoj, David
Štrumbelj, Erik
Methodology
Graphics
Machine Learning
We present a general approach to visualizing uncertainty in static 2-D statistical graphics. If we treat a visualization as a function of its underlying quantities, uncertainty in those quantities induces a distribution over images. We show how to aggregate these images into a single visualization that represents the uncertainty. The approach can be viewed as a generalization of sample-based approaches that use overlay. Notably, standard representations, such as confidence intervals and bands, emerge with their usual coverage guarantees without being explicitly quantified or visualized. As a proof of concept, we implement our approach in the IID setting using resampling, provided as an open-source Python library. Because the approach operates directly on images, the user needs only to supply the data and the code for visualizing the quantities of interest without uncertainty. Through several examples, we show how both familiar and novel forms of uncertainty visualization can be created. The implementation is not only a practical validation of the underlying theory but also an immediately usable tool that can complement existing uncertainty-visualization libraries.
title A General Approach to Visualizing Uncertainty in Statistical Graphics
topic Methodology
Graphics
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.00937