Category:Tables

From CheLabWiki

…from CheLabWiki, an online resource for chemical-engineering laboratories located at www.chelabwiki.org; Site Revision #480; 6 January 2009.

Whenever we generate many numbers, whether by calculation or by experiment, we invariably reach a point at which the data must be reduced to coherent and accessible forms. Such forms are usually realized as tables. Tables help us organize information into economical units; they help make comparisons; they reveal trends and anomalies; they clarify presentations and lines of reasoning. Moreover tables can serve as bases for further analyses.^[1] To create a table we must select the data to be presented, organize the data into meaningful patterns, and document the presentation using such devices as captions, headings, and footnotes. Of these three steps, the first—selecting the data—is a problem peculiar to a particular experimental or computational situation and is beyond the scope of this book. So in this chapter we focus on the second and third steps: organizing the chosen data into tables and documenting the presentation. As with all aspects of communication, each table must be designed with its intended use in mind and then edited to ensure that its intended effect is achieved.

Tables may be simple to construct and straightforward to read, or they may be complicated by many interrelated variables. Complicated tables may require effort to decipher, and yet complicated tables can be effective. The point is that tables should be complicated because the data are complicated, not because the data are poorly organized. Simple data should appear in simple tables.

Reference

1. ↑ J. W. Tukey, Exploratory Data Analysis, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1977.