What is this type of plot and how to interpret it?

Question

I was presented to this plot and i've seen it before, however i would like to know what does the countour around the main line mean.

Ps: i couldn't find enough information about it to investigate by myself, so i had to create this question.

score 7 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 04 '20 at 02:29

The shaded area likely shows the dark green line plus or minus some error/uncertainty estimate. Common error estimates may be based on the standard deviation, a confidence interval, or the interquartile range depending on the data and the analysis being done. Without more information, we cannot know what the shaded area represents.

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 04 '20 at 00:15

5

It might be plus or minus one standard deviation. But it could be anything really. Without more context you can't be sure.

answered Jul 04 '20 at 00:15

Daniel K

151
1

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 04 '20 at 02:34

Without more information it is hard to say for certain, but my best guess is that the shaded region is a confidence interval (say ± 1 standard deviation) around the predicted values which are represented by the line. For example, have a read through this article where the author creates a time series prediction for stock market prices with a confidence interval and generates a similar visualization.

What is this type of plot and how to interpret it?

3 Answers3