E-module 3 - Displaying data

Question 1

List 6 types of graph and the type of variable x and y would be for each

Answer 1

Pie chart - x: categorical y: discrete quantitative
Bar chart - x: categorical or discrete quantitative y: quantitative
Histogram - x: continuous quantitative y: discrete quantitative
Dot-plot - x: categorical y: continuous quantitative
Box and whiskers - x: categorical y: continuous quantitative
Scatter plot - x: continuous quantitative y: continuous quantitative

Question 2

What are the elements that should be in a good figure or table?

Answer 2

• title
• labelled axes (with units)
• legend

may also contain:

• annotations to describe certain elements
• asterisks to denote significance

Question 3

What elements should a good legend contain?

Answer 3

• Title: one sentence either descriptive (stating how the experiment was conducted) or declarative (what the figure shows)
• Methods: brief sentence about the methods used to generate the figure
• Results: very brief explanation of findings. P-values and sample size should also be included
• Definitions: explanations of all the symbols, scale bars, error bars or abbreviations used in the figure.

Question 4

Which type of graph is used to determine whether a variable is normally distributed?

Answer 4

Histogram or Box & whiskers plot