In a recent blog post, I showed figures from a recent paper and invited readers to redesign them to communicate their message more effectively.
This notebook shows one way we might redesign the figures. At the same time, it demonstrates a simple use of a Pandas MultiIndex.
In [1]:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import pandas as pd
The study reports the distribution of student evaluation scores for instructors under eight conditions. At the top level, they report scores from evaluations with a 10-point of 6-points scale.
In [2]:
scale = ['10-point', '6-point']
At the next level, they distinguish fields of study as "least" or "most" male-dominated.
In [3]:
area = ['LeastMaleDominated', 'MostMaleDominated']
And they distinguish between male and female instructors.
In [4]:
instructor = ['Male', 'Female']
We can assemble those levels into a MultiIndex like this:
In [5]:
index = pd.MultiIndex.from_product([scale, area, instructor],
names=['Scale', 'Area', 'Instructor'])
index
Out[5]:
For each of these eight conditions, the original paper reports the entire distribution of student evaluation scores. To make a simpler and clearer visualization of the results, I am going to present a summary of these distributions.
I could take the mean of each distribution, and that would show the effect. But to make it even clearer, I will use the fraction of "top" scores, meaning a 9 or 10 on the 10-point scale and a 6 on the 6-point scale.
Now, to get the data, I used the figures from the paper and estimated numbers by eye. So these numbers are only approximate!
In [6]:
data = [60, 60, 54, 38, 43, 42, 41, 41]
df = pd.DataFrame(data, columns=['TopScore%'], index=index)
df
Out[6]:
To extract the subset of the data on a 10-point scale, we can use loc in the usual way.
In [7]:
df.loc['10-point']
Out[7]:
To extract subsets at other levels, we can use xs. This example takes a cross-section of the second level.
In [8]:
df.xs('MostMaleDominated', level='Area')
Out[8]:
This example takes a cross-section of the third level.
In [9]:
df.xs('Male', level='Instructor')
Out[9]:
Ok, now to think about presenting the data. At the top level, the 10-point scale and the 6-point scale are different enough that I want to put them on different axes. So I'll start by splitting the data at the top level.
In [10]:
ten = df.loc['10-point']
ten
Out[10]:
Now, the primary thing I want the reader to see is a discrepancy in percentages. For comparison of two or more values, a bar plot is often a good choice.
As a starting place, I'll try the Pandas default for showing a bar plot of this data.
In [11]:
ten.unstack().plot(kind='bar');
As defaults go, that's not bad. From this figure it is immediately clear that there is a substantial difference in scores between male and female instructors in male-dominated areas, and no difference in other areas.
The following function cleans up some of the details in the presentation.
In [12]:
def make_bar_plot(df):
# make the plot (and set the rotation of the x-axis)
df.unstack().plot(kind='bar', rot=0, alpha=0.7);
# clean up the legend
plt.gca().legend(['Female', 'Male'])
# label the y axis
plt.ylabel('Fraction of instructors getting top scores')
# set limits on the 7-axis (in part to make room for the legend)
plt.ylim([0, 75])
Here are the results for the 10-point scale.
In [13]:
make_bar_plot(ten)
plt.title('10-point scale');
And here are the results for the six-point scale, which show clearly that the effect disappears when a 6-point scale is used (at least in this experiment).
In [14]:
six = df.loc['6-point']
make_bar_plot(six)
plt.title('6-point scale');
Presenting two figures might be the best option, but in my challenge I asked for a single figure.
Here's a version that uses Pandas defaults with minimal customization.
In [17]:
df.unstack().plot(kind='barh', xlim=[0, 65], alpha=0.7);
plt.gca().legend(['Female', 'Male'])
plt.gca().invert_yaxis()
plt.xlabel('Fraction of instructors getting top scores')
plt.tight_layout()
plt.savefig('gender_bias.png')
With a little tuning, this could be a good choice. It clearly shows that there is only a substantial difference in one of the four conditions.
In [ ]: