A funnel plot is a useful graph designed to check the existence of publication bias in systematic reviews and meta-analyses. It assumes that the largest studies will be near the average, and small studies will be spread on both sides of the average. Variation from this assumption can indicate publication bias.
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)