Protobi can bin numeric values into ranges for concise display and analysis.
When a project is first opened, Protobi automatically bins numeric variables into ranges and you can change these to reflect your analysis goals.
To edit rounding/binning, press the circle icon select "Round by..." from the context menu.
- Auto — Auto-rounds based on the standard deviation
- Log — Uses logarithmic ranges
- Custom
- Linear bins — Specify your desired equal bin size, e.g. 25
- Custom bins — Enter an array of cut-points, e.g. [10,25,50]
Auto bins
The setting "Auto" chooses a linear range with bin sizes automatically selected to generate a reasonable number of ranges given the standard deviation, with boundaries that snap to nice multiples of 5 or 10.
Log bins
Logarithmic ranges choose bin sizes that neatly map to multiples of 10, 25, and 50, resulting in small ranges for small numbers and bigger ranges for bigger numbers.
Log ranges generally make sense for unbounded numbers and absolute counts, such as income, number of customers, or patient volume.
Linear bins
Here we set "Round by" to Custom: 10
Linear ranges are inclusive of the upper bounds, and exclusive of lower bounds, and rounded to reasonable precision for display. So in above example, the range "21 to 30" really represents "20 < Q3 <= 30".
Custom bins
It's possible to choose arbitrary ranges by specifying a list of cut-points, separated by commas. Here we set "Round by" to [10,25,50]:
This generates bands with the specified values as upper bounds:
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Alternately, it's possible to specify custom ranges that are lower-inclusive by specifying them with as follows, with a square bracket on the left, and a round-parenthesis on the right, e.g. [0,10,25,50)
Remove decimals from bins
Custom bin ranges might show decimal places. Say you have a question for which you want to see respondents who answered: 0, 1, 2, 3-5, 6-9, and 10+.
You can choose custom bins: [0,1,2,5,9,100]. For the ranges (e.g. 3-5) specify the upper limit only.
Because custom bin ranges are lower-inclusive, this is the result:
Add the "epsilon" attribute
One option to remove decimals is to add the "epsilon" attribute to the element's JSON. In mathematics epsilon represents an arbitrarily small quantity. Setting "epsilon" to 1 will remove any decimals from the binned ranges.
The result:
Another option is to specify formats for each bin. This will give you greater control of how the bins are labeled, since format will take any string of characters.
