jmp.

com/learn Ver 07/2018

Opening JMP® and Getting Started

This page gives information on creating a new data table, opening data tables, and finding help within JMP.

Opening JMP
1. When you first open JMP, you’ll see the Tip of the Day and the JMP
Home windows. On Mac you’ll also see the JMP Starter window.
o Tip of the Day gives helpful hints on using JMP.
o The JMP Home Window displays recently used files and open data
tables and windows. See the page “Navigating JMP in Windows”
for Windows-specific information.
o The JMP Starter window (click on View > JMP Starter on Windows
to open) provides shortcuts for using JMP, including opening files
and accessing JMP analyses.
2. The JMP menus, across the top, can be used to perform JMP functions.
3. The JMP toolbar, located beneath the menu bar, provides many
shortcuts and helpful tools.

Creating a New JMP Data Table

Click on File > New > Data Table or select New Data Table from the JMP Starter.

Opening a JMP Data Table

1. Click on File > Open, or click on Open Data Table from the JMP Starter window.
Navigate to the directory where your JMP, Excel or other files are stored.
2. Click on the file name and click Open.

Getting Help
The Help menu provides many resources to help you get started:

• Searchable documentation (JMP Help and Books),

• A summary of new features,
• Tutorials,
• Sample Data,
• Indexes of statistical terms and JMP scripting functions, and more.
 jmp.com/learn Ver 07/2018

Histograms, Descriptive Statistics, and Stem and Leaf

Use to display and describe the distribution of continuous (numeric) variables. Histograms and stem and leaf
plots allow you to quickly assess the shape, centering and spread of a distribution. For categorical (nominal or
ordinal) variables, see the page Bar Charts and Frequency Distributions.

Histograms and Descriptive Statistics

1. From an open JMP® data table, select Analyze > Distribution.
2. Click on one or more continuous variables from Select Columns, and click Y, Columns (continuous variables
have blue triangles).
3. Click OK to generate a histogram, outlier box plot and descriptive statistics.
• The percentiles, including quartiles and the median, are listed under Quantiles.
• The sample mean, standard deviation and other statistics are listed under Summary Statistics.
Car Physical Data.jmp (Help > Sample Data Library)

Tips:

• To change the display from vertical to horizontal (as shown), click on the top red triangle and select Stack.
• To change the graphical display for a variable, or to select additional options, click on the red triangle for
that variable.
• To display different summary statistics, use the red triangle next to Summary Statistics.
• To change all future output to horizontal, go to Preferences > Platforms > Distribution, click Stack and
Horizontal Layout, then click OK.

Stem and Leaf Plot

To generate a stem and leaf plot, click on the red triangle
for the variable and select Stem and Leaf.

Tips:
• A key to interpret the values is at the bottom of the plot. The top value in this example is 4300, the bottom
value is 1700 (values have been rounded to the nearest 100).
• Click on values in the stem and leaf plot to select observations in both the histogram and the data table. Or,
select bars in the histogram to select values in the stem and leaf plot and data table.

Note: For more information, see the book Basic Analysis (under Help > Books).
 jmp.com/learn Ver 07/2018

Box Plots
Use to display the distribution of continuous variables. They are also useful for comparing distributions.

Box Plots – One Variable

1. From an open JMP® data table, select Analyze > Distribution.
2. Click on one or more continuous variables from Select Columns, and Click Y,
Columns (continuous variables have blue triangles).
3. Click OK. An outlier box plot is displayed by default next to the histogram (or
above if horizontal layout). To display a quantile box plot, select the option from
the red triangle for the variable.
Quantile Outlier
Box Plot Box Plot The Outlier Box Plot shows the box, plus:

The lines on the • IQR = the 3rd quartile minus the 1st
Quantile Box Plot quartile.
correspond to • Whiskers drawn to the furthest point
the quantiles in within 1.5 x IQR from the box.
the distribution • Potential outliers (disconnected
output. points).
• A red bracket defining the shortest
half of the data (the densest region).
• A confidence diamond showing the
mean (middle of the diamond) and
the upper and lower bound of a 95%
Box Plots – Two Variables confidence interval for the population
mean.
1. Select Analyze > Fit Y by X.
2. Click on a continuous variable from Select Columns, and Click Y, Response.
3. Click on a categorical variable and click X, Factor (categorical variables have red or green bars).
4. Click OK. The Oneway Analysis output window will display.
5. Click on the red triangle, and select Display Options > Box Plots to display quantile box plots, or select
Quantiles to display both box plots and quantiles (shown right).

Example: Companies.jmp
(Help > Sample Data Library)

Notes: Box plots for one or more variables can also be generated from Graph > Graph Builder. For more
information on box plots, see the book Basic Analysis (under Help > Books).
 jmp.com/learn Ver 07/2018

Finding the Area Under a Normal Curve

This page shows how to find the area under the normal curve using formulas and the Distribution Calculator.

Column Formula for Area Under a Normal Curve (One Value)

Caret
1. Select File > New > Data Table.
2. Add one row - select Rows > Add Rows, and type “1”.
Click OK.
3. Right-click on Column 1, and select Formula to access the
Formula Editor.
4. From the function list on the left, select Probability >
Normal Distribution. This will give the following formula:

5. Click the caret on the keypad twice to add fields for

the mean and standard deviation.

6. In the fields provided, enter the value of x, the mean, and the standard deviation.
7. Click OK. JMP® will populate the row in the data table with the cumulative probability value (the area under
the lower tail of the normal curve).
Note: To find the area in the upper tail, or the area between two values, use the following formulas:
• Upper tail:
• Between two values:

Column Formula for Area Under a Normal Curve (Multiple Values)

1. Open an existing data table (File > Open), or open a new data table Big Class.jmp (Help > Sample Data Library)

(File > New > Data Table) and create a column of values.
2. Select Cols > New Column to create an additional column, and rename
the column. We’ll name our column Prob Height.
3. Click Column Properties, and select Formula to access the Formula
Editor.
4. Follow steps 4 and 5 above.
5. Click on the box containing “x,” and from Table Columns, select the variable (for example, Height).
6. Type the mean and standard deviation in the fields provided.
7. Click OK. JMP will populate the column with cumulative probability values for each value of the variable.

Distribution Calculator
Select Distribution Calculator from Help > Sample Data > Teaching
Scripts > Interactive Teaching Modules.

Enter the mean and the standard deviation, select the type of
calculation, and enter the values or the probabilities. Click the Help
button for instructions and use notes.
 jmp.com/learn Ver 07/2018

Assessing Normality
This page documents some ways to assess normality for a continuous (quantitative) variable.

1. From an open JMP® data table, select Analyze > Distribution.

2. Select one or more continuous variables from Select Columns and click Y, Columns.
3. Click OK to generate a histogram and descriptive statistics (a horizontal layout is shown below).

Car Physical Data.jmp (Help >

Sample Data Library)

Normal Quantile Plot

Click on the red triangle for the variable (Weight, in this example), and select Normal Quantile Plot.

If the data more or less follow a straight

line (fat pen test), we can conclude that
the data are reasonably approximated by a
normal distribution.

For this example, we would conclude the

distribution is approximately normal.

Fitting a Normal Distribution

1. Select Continuous Fit > Normal from the lower red triangle.
2. In the resulting output, click on the red triangle for Fitted Normal and
select Goodness of Fit.

Interpretation (using a significance level of 0.05):

• Prob<W is the p-value for this test.

• Our p-value is 0.5681.
• A p-value less than 0.05 would indicate that the
underlying distribution is not normal.
• We do not have sufficient evidence to conclude
that the underlying distribution is not normally
distributed.