Displaying data

Question 1

How do you annotate figures?

Answer 1

Title
Labelled axes (with units)
Legend
Annotations to describe certain elements
Asterisks to denote significance

Question 2

What should you think about when choosing the best type of graph for your data?

Answer 2

The hypothesis

- what will show the comparisons made in the most simple and effective way

Question 3

Name six ways to display data

Answer 3

Pie chart
Bar chart
Histogram
Dot-plot
Box and whiskers
Scatter plot

Question 4

When would you use a pie chart?

Answer 4

Shows relative sizes of parts of whole
Aesthetically pleasing
Not considered scientifically accurate

x = categorical 
y = counted quantitative

Question 5

When would you use a bar chart?

Answer 5

Most common way of representing comparative data
Considered accurate and easy to interpret
Able to show data dispersion (i.e. standard deviation) as well as measure of centrality (i.e. mean)

x = categorical/quantitative counted
y = quantitative data

Question 6

When would you use a histogram?

Answer 6

Looks like bar chart but difference is it can have CONTINUOUS numerical data on both axes (bar chart only has on one)

Frequency histogram (most common):
x = continuous quantitative
y = quantitative counted

Question 7

When would you use a dot-plot?

Answer 7

Graphical display of data using dots
Advantage is better visual representation of data dispersion
More suitable for smaller data-sets

x = categorical
y = continuous quantitative

Question 8

When would you use a box and whiskers?

Answer 8

Shows a 5-number summary of a data-set
Box represents the interquartile range and whiskers represent the extremities
Used to primarily summarise a single non-parametric numerical data-set

x = categorical
y = continuous quantitative

Question 9

When would you use a scatter plot?

Answer 9

Identify similarities between two data-sets/find relationship between two continuous variables
Line can be added to show correlation

x = continuous quantitative
y = continuous quantitative