Final answer:
Someone may use a boxplot instead of a histogram because boxplots are more effective for making side-by-side comparisons of data distributions and clearly show the range, median, and interquartile range of a data set.
Step-by-step explanation:
Why Use Box Plots Instead of Histograms?
The reason someone might decide to use a boxplot to represent a set of data rather than a histogram is that boxplots are better for side-by-side comparisons. Box plots display the minimum value, first quartile, median, third quartile, and maximum value, making it easy to compare these statistics across different sets of data. This is particularly useful when comparing the distributions of data side by side for different groups or variables.
Box plots also succinctly show the range of the data and can give a quick picture of the data layout, including the concentration and how far the extreme values are from the bulk of the data. Although box plots do not clearly illustrate the mean, they do show the median, which is less influenced by outliers and skewed data. By making it easy to identify the spread for the middle 50 percent of the data (the interquartile range), box plots provide a clear visual representation of the distribution's dispersion.