I am working on creating a website, which displays the census data for a user selected Polygons & would like to graphically show the distribution of various parameters (one graph per parameter).
The data usually has the following properties:
- The sample size tend to be large (say around 10,000 data points)
- The range in values tends to be quire large (for example, the minimum population can be less than 100 & the maximum can be something like 500,000)
- q1 usually is close to the minimum (say 200) while q2 & q3 will be within 10,000
- It doesn't look anything like a normal distribution
I am not a statistician and hence my description might not be exactly clear.
I would like to show this distribution on a graph, which will be seen by citizens (the layman, if you like).
I would have best liked to use a histogram, but it is not possible due to the large range of values, due to which making bins is not really easy & straight forward.
From what little I know about statistics, a box plot is what is often used to show this kind of data, but I feel that for a layperson, deciphering the Box plot is not easy.
What are my options to show this data in an easy to understand manner?