Graphical advice for conference presenters - demo

Yesterday, I pulled this graphic from a journal paper, and said one should not copy and paste this into an oral presentation.

So I went ahead and did some cosmetic surgery on this chart.

I don't know anything about the underlying science. I'm just interpreting what I see on the chart. It seems like the key message is that the Flowering condition is different from the other three. There are no statistical differences between the three boxplots in the first three panels but there is a big difference between the red-green and the purple in the last panel. Further, this difference can be traced to the red-green boxplots exhibiting negative correlation under the Flowering condition - while the purple boxplot is the same under all four conditions.

I would also have chosen different colors, e.g. make red-green two shades of gray to indicate that these two things can be treated as the same under this chart. Doing this would obviate the need to introduce the orange color.

Further, I think it might be interesting to see the plots split differently: try having the red-green boxplots side by side in one panel, and the purple boxplots in another panel.

If the presentation software has animation, the presenter can show the different text blocks and related materials one at a time. That also aids comprehension.

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Note that the plot is designed for an oral presentation in which you have a minute or two to get the message across. It's debatable as to whether journal editors should accept this style for publications. I actually think such a style would improve reading comprehension but I surmise some of you will disagree.