Read Weissgerber et al. (2015) in full. Also skim section 3 of Politzer-Ahles & Piccinini (2018). When you're done, proceed to the reflection questions below.
What are some situations that can occur if you make a graph that shows summary statistics of your data (such as averages) without showing the actual data? (For ideas, see the papers linked previously, as well as the Bar Barplots campaign or Anscombe's Quartet.)
In section 3 of Politzer-Ahles & Piccinini (2018), we discuss "inferential" vs. "communicative" functions of graphs. What is a situation where you might want to create an "inferential" graph? What is a situation where you might want to create a "communicative" graph?
Suppose you do a study in which you have 2 groups, with 10 people in each group. For a study like this, imagine at least three different possible outcomes that would have the same barplot but different informative graphs. Draw graphs of each of these possible outcomes. (You can use plotting software like R or Excel, or you can just draw by hand.)
When you finish this activity, you are done with the module (assuming all your work on this and the previous tasks has been satisfactory). However, you may still continue on to the advanced-level task for this module if you wish to complete this module at the advanced level (if you're aiming for a higher grade or if you are just particularly interested in this topic). Otherwise, you can return to the module homepage to review this module, or return to the class homepage to select a different module or assignment to do now.
by Stephen Politzer-Ahles. Last modified on 2021-05-17. CC-BY-4.0.