ABSTRACT
Route map
Imagine you have just collected your first set of data. What on earth are you going to do with it? This chapter explains the basics of summarising and presenting your data. To begin with we look at histograms, which are a way of graphing raw data to see the distribution of scores. We'll discover some of the properties of histograms and find out about a special kind of distribution known as the normal distribution. It's important as scientists to summarise your data so that others can quickly and easily see what you have discovered. The chapter looks at some of the ways we can summarise data both in terms of what a typical score is (the mean, mode and median) and how diverse your scores are (the range, interquartile range and variance). Next, we look at some common ways of graphing these values, in particular bar charts, line charts, boxplots and scatterplots. Finally, we end with a few comments about how not to draw graphs!
