Violin Plot Tool
Violin Plot Tool
User Role Requirements
User Role* | Tool/Feature Access |
|---|---|
Full User | ✓ |
Basic User | X |
*Applies to Alteryx One Professional and Enterprise Edition customers on Designer versions 2025.1+.
Use Violin Plot to show the distribution of a single numeric variable, and convey the density of the distribution based on a kernel smoother that indicates the density of values (via width) of the numeric field.
The inner portion of each violin is a box and whisker plot of the data, where the bottom and top of the inner box are at the first and third quartiles, and the white circle inside the box is at the median for the measure. The vertical bars that extend above and below the box indicate the range of the data that is within 1.5 times the interquartile range (where the interquartile range is the difference between the values of the third and first quartiles).
In addition to concisely showing the nature of the distribution of a numeric variable, violin plots are an excellent way of visualizing the relationship between a numeric and categorical variable by creating a separate violin plot for each value of the categorical variable.
Important
This tool is not automatically installed with Designer. To use it, download and install the Alteryx Predictive Tools for your version of Alteryx Designer. Depending on your Alteryx account type, you have two download options:
Download from Alteryx One
Download from Alteryx Licensing & Downloads Portal.
For more information, go to Download and Use Predictive Tools
One Tool Example
Violin Plot has a One Tool Example. Go to Sample Workflows to learn how to access this and many other examples directly in Alteryx Designer.
Connect Input
An Alteryx data stream with at least one numeric field.
Configure the Tool
Main Configuration Tab
Field to plot: The numeric field (column) to plot.
Plot by groups: Indicates whether a categorical variable will be used to group observations based on its levels to create a violin plot for each level. When this option is selected, you are asked to indicate which categorical variable to use to create groups.
Enter a title for the plot: An optional main title for the plot.
Graphics Options Tab
Plot size: Specify the width and height dimensions of the resulting plot, using either inches or centimeters.
Graph resolution: Select the resolution of the graph in dots per inch: 1x (96 dpi), 2x (192 dpi), or 3x (288 dpi).
Lower resolution creates a smaller file and is best for viewing on a monitor.
Higher resolution creates a larger file with better print quality.
Base font size (points): The point size of the base font used to produce the title and labels of the plots to be produced. The plotting functions will expand the size of the plot title to be larger than the base font automatically.
View the Output
The tool outputs an Alteryx graph object.