Power transformations change the shape of a distribution

The effect of power transformations on the shape of a distribution can be seen in all graphical displays. The diagrams on this page show their effect on box plots and stacked dot plots.

Drag the red vertical line on the axis of the display below to observe how transforming the data set affects a box plot. The raw data are fairly symmetric, so high and low powers make the distribution skew, and the box plots display outliers.

Stacked dot plots similarly show the skewness evident in these data after transformation. (Histograms are affected in a similar way.)