Tips

Dear colleagues and students,

This web link has good tips about constructing effective and accurate tables and charts. The website author, Gary Klass, describes three fundamental elements of 'bad' graphical display: data ambiguity, data distortion, and data distraction.

Sharon Homan

PS: SPH students: Many of you are preparing papers, power point presentations, and reports that contain tables and graphs. Often these graphical displays look sleek, but do not effectively and accurately present statistical information. In our classes, the biostatistics professors emphasize the need to construct "good" tables and graphs. Our introductory biostatistics exams and our MPH comprehensive exams typically feature questions related to constructing and interpreting graphs and tables. I think you will find the tips in this web link helpful, especially the following recommendations:

"Edward Tufte's fundamental rule of efficient graphical design is to minimize the ratio of ink-to-data.
This is essentially the same advice offered by Strunk and White to would be writers: "A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences for the same reason that a drawing should contain no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts." (23)
"3-D options serve no useful purpose; they add only ink to the chart, and more often than not make it more difficult to estimate the values represented."

http://lilt.ilstu.edu/gmklass/pos138/datadisplay/badchart.htm