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I was presented to this plot and i've seen it before, however i would like to know what does the countour around the main line mean.

misterious plot

Ps: i couldn't find enough information about it to investigate by myself, so i had to create this question.

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    $\begingroup$ Have you got any more context? Answers provided are all guessing but agree it is probably error bounds. In my experience I've created plots like these for forecasts (green area expanding as we get further into the future and become less certain of a particular outcome) - this could be the case but without more information from you, it would only be guesswork, not an answer. $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 4, 2020 at 10:52
  • $\begingroup$ This plot was taken from an online presentation, unfortunately i asked the author but he didn't answered due to many questions being sent. All answers (including your comment) make a lot of sense. Thanks! $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 4, 2020 at 15:27
  • $\begingroup$ Is there any reason you haven't given us a link to the online presentation? It would make our lives much easier. $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 5, 2020 at 15:35

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The shaded area likely shows the dark green line plus or minus some error/uncertainty estimate. Common error estimates may be based on the standard deviation, a confidence interval, or the interquartile range depending on the data and the analysis being done. Without more information, we cannot know what the shaded area represents.

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It might be plus or minus one standard deviation. But it could be anything really. Without more context you can't be sure.

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Without more information it is hard to say for certain, but my best guess is that the shaded region is a confidence interval (say ± 1 standard deviation) around the predicted values which are represented by the line. For example, have a read through this article where the author creates a time series prediction for stock market prices with a confidence interval and generates a similar visualization.

enter image description here

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