Transcript AED – Analyzing & Presenting Your Data

AED – ANALYZING &
PRESENTING YOUR DATA
Do’s and Don’ts
RAW DATA
Should be collected in lab notebook, by hand
 Transferred to excel spreadsheet
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Don’t separate each data point by commas
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It will be impossible for Excel to process the data
Usually in writing your paper, the raw data will
go into the appendix section of your paper
QUALITATIVE DATA
Take photos when available
 Don’t include EVERY photo of Every sample
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Choose the best representative of each group and put
a good quality photo
Label photos thoroughly
Provide magnification
 Put arrows pointing to features you are describing
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Good
 Example
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DATA ANALYSIS (PROCESSED DATA)
At the very least you should include:
 Means +/- Standard deviation
 A t-test to compare your data to the controls
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Be sure it addresses your research question
LABELING OF TABLES AND GRAPHS
DO - Use a descriptive title
 Do - Number each table, and graph
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Table 1: Title
 Figure 2: Title
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Don’t - forget units
 Do - Choose appropriate graphs
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Line vs. Bar
 Almost never a pie graph 
 No lines of best fit (generally)
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Include Error Bars
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Standard deviations – not all the same for each data
point
TABLES – DO’S AND DON’T
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Raw data –
Don’t - Make 1 giant table and put in results
Do - Put large amounts of raw data in appendix
Do – If raw data is particularly interesting, include in
results section
 Do- include well-labeled data tables in appendix, based on
hand-written data collected in lab notebook, documented
with date
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Processed Data
Do include tables of processed data (ex. Mean +/- SD, % of
______)
 Don’t include a random table of SD’s by themselves
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Irrelevant when not around the mean
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Don’t – put a big table of p-values without identifying what
was compared
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Here’s a bad example: (next slide)
A GOOD EXAMPLE
Means are expressed +/- SD
 Processed data all on 1 table
 Units in title
 Descriptive title
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GRAPHING
Don’t graph all of your raw data
 Often several treatments or days of data
collection can be combined onto one graph
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Sometimes less is more!
Include statistical analysis when appropriate
An asterisk or other symbol, combined with
descriptive figure legend can show your statistical
analysis (* = p<0.05)
 This eliminates need for a t-test table in your results
section (real scientists don’t usually include these)
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