What does the box in a box-and-whisker plot represent?

In a box-and-whisker plot, the box represents the middle 50% of scores within the dataset. This range is known as the interquartile range (IQR), which spans from the first quartile (25th percentile) to the third quartile (75th percentile).

The box itself is constructed by drawing vertical lines at the first quartile and the third quartile, highlighting the spread of the central half of the data. This representation allows us to easily see where the bulk of the data lies, providing insights into its variability and central tendency.

The whiskers extend from either end of the box to show the range of the data beyond the interquartile range, reaching out to the minimum and maximum values. Therefore, the box encompasses the core distribution of scores, indicating where most of the observations fall and thus illustrating the data's overall distribution effectively.