Chapter 7. A Practical Guide to Scientific Plotting

Creating scientific figures is where art meets science. Any scientific data visualization should be "of substance, statistics and design" (pg. 51, Tufte, Edward R. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Graphics Press: Cheshire, CT, 1983; pp 1‐197). We say a picture is worth a thousand words, but not all graphics are created equal. A well-drawn visual attracts audience and soundly delivers messages. On the contrary, poorly made plots can impede understanding, or even be misleading. We now have a myriad of tools for data plotting; virtually anyone can convert numbers to graphics before grasping the purpose or nature of these graphs. Such convenience makes good planning and careful crafting your actual survival skills in data visualization.

Undoubtedly, accuracy and clarity are the basic criteria to communicate scientific facts. It is more than labeling each axis properly with International System of Units (SI). The level of statistical...