From d74d4b65a51d11db90198d6f2548d9ab942a2c25 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Christian Kolset Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2025 13:51:43 -0600 Subject: Added \'in the end section\' --- tutorials/module_4/4.2 Interpreting Data.md | 22 ++++++++++++++++++++-- 1 file changed, 20 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/tutorials/module_4/4.2 Interpreting Data.md b/tutorials/module_4/4.2 Interpreting Data.md index 0efb595..c889b86 100644 --- a/tutorials/module_4/4.2 Interpreting Data.md +++ b/tutorials/module_4/4.2 Interpreting Data.md @@ -30,7 +30,7 @@ As engineers and scientists, we must grasp the semantics of our work—not merel ## Purpose - Why? Does the figure show the overall story or main point when you hide the text? -Starting with the most important aspect of a figure is the purpose. What do you want to show? Why are why showing this? What is so important? These questions will help us decide on what time of plot we need. There are many types of plots and some are better for different purposes. +Starting with the most important aspect of a figure is the purpose. What do you want to show? Why are we showing this? What is so important? These questions will help us decide on what time of plot we need. There are many types of plots and some are better for different purposes. Often in engineering you find yourself **comparing** or **contrasting** or **show a change** between sets of data. For these cases you should use either a *line chart* or a *scatter plot*. This is often used when plotting mathematical function. @@ -62,10 +62,28 @@ Here is an example of how color can be used to enhance the difference between th -## Problem 1: +## In the end + +#### Data don't lie +And neither should your figures, even unintentionally. So it's important that you understand every step that stands between your raw data and the final figure. One way to think of this is that your data undergoes a series of transformations to get from what you measure to what ends up in the journal. For example, you might start with a set of mouse weight measurements. These numbers get 'transformed' into the figure as the vertical position of points on a chart, arranged in such a way that 500g is twice as far from the chart baseline as 250g. Or, a raw immunofluorescence image (a grid of photon counts) gets transformed by the application of a lookup table into a grayscale image. Either way, exactly what each transformation entails should be clear and reproducible. Nothing in the workflow should be a magic "black box." + +#### Follow the formatting rules +Following one set of formatting rules shouldn't be too hard, at least when the journal is clear about what it expects, which isn't always the case. But the trick is developing a workflow that is sufficiently flexible to handle a wide variety of formatting rules — 300dpi or 600dpi, Tiff or PostScript, margins or no margins. The general approach should be to push decisions affecting the final figure format as far back in the workflow as possible so that switching does not require rebuilding the entire figure from scratch. +#### Quality +Unfortunately, making sure your figures look just the way you like is one of the most difficult goals of the figure-building process. Why? Because what you give the journal is _not_ the same thing that will end up on the website or in the PDF. Or in print, but who reads print journals these days? The final figure files you hand over to the editor will be further processed — generally through some of those magic "black boxes." Though you can't control journal-induced figure quality loss, you can make sure the files you give them are as high-quality as possible going in. +#### Transparency +If Reviewer #3 — or some guy in a bad mood who reads your paper five years after it gets published — doesn't like what he sees, you are going to have to prove that you prepared the figure appropriately. That means the figure-building workflow must be transparent. Every intermediate step from the raw data to the final figure should be saved, and it must be clear how each step is linked. Another reason to avoid black boxes. +Checklist + - [ ] Select appropriate type + - [ ] Labels + - [ ] Grid + - [ ] Axis + - [ ] Clarity + +## Problem 1: ## Problem 2: -- cgit v1.2.3