The ear's versus the eye's potential to assess characteristics of numeric data: Are we too visuocentric?

Abstract

A single experiment studied how effectively information about the central tendency, variability, and shape of numeric data distributions could be conveyed to statistically knowledgeable subjects. The data were summarized by visual histograms, auditory histograms that coded numeric value as pitch on the musical scale, and five-note auditory analogues of a box-whisker display that coded the minimum, quartile, and maximum scores as musical notes. Regression and multidimensional scaling analysis of judgments of dissimilarity between distributions showed that auditory depiction provides a highly effective means of conveying information about distributional characteristies. Auditory depicition may be a useful alternative to traditional visual graphics. © 1992 Psychonomic Society, Inc.