Improving Your Graphs: An Exercise in Data Presentation

Too often, beginning science students do not fully understand the importance of data presentation. In their textbooks and during lectures, data generally are presented in a clear easy-to-understand format. In this exercise, students are presented with an introduction to graphs and tables, a short primer on Excel, and hypothetical raw data from several related experiments. Working together, pairs of students prepare figures displaying the data. They then show their figures to the class and, as a group, the class discusses the relative merits of different data presentation approaches.