Category:Plots and Charts

From CheLabWiki

…from CheLabWiki, an online resource for chemical-engineering laboratories located at www.chelabwiki.org; Site Revision #566; 6 January 2009.

Many kinds of technical information are presented most effectively and economically through such graphic devices as plots and charts. Compared to text and equations, graphics are often more effective because they may be more closely akin to the ways people think: the oldest historical records are not text but drawings on bone, rock, and cave walls. Apparently, many people think about technical material, not in words or numbers or equations, but in pictures. The pictures contained in technical graphics are rarely in any sense realistic, and yet their abstract symbolism facilitates communication.

Nowadays computer software substantially reduces the labor of creating plots and charts; or, rather, graphic software reduces the labor of creating first drafts. Unfortunately, easy-to-use software may seduce us into neglecting graphic design, leading us to use a crisply printed first draft as the final copy. But graphics must be created with care, for poorly designed graphics can frustrate a reader's attempts to comprehend, and carelessly executed graphics can lead a reader astray. As always, our goal is to help the reader get the message—just as an effective paragraph is a consequence of much thought and editing, so too is an effective graphic.