Why use graphical presentations?

• Very compact – you can present at lot of data in a small space – in contrast to a table
• To bring out difference and make comparisons
• To help abstract a general (abstract) “picture” (conception) from the data
• Many people are good at seeing patterns in visual scenes
• To achieve clarity and objectivity
• To support your text (i.e., to help you tell your story)

Transcript

So why do we use graphical presentations? And the reason - first and foremost - is they are very compact you can put a lot of data in a very small amount of space - in comparison to the table which takes more space for the same amount of data. It also makes it easy to bring out differences and therefore facilitates the viewer being able to do comparisons. And often is the case that we can take an abstract view with the picture, and therefore we can make it much easier to understand the concept that we are trying to convey that we've learned from our data. Of course, many people are very good at seeing patterns in visual scenes, and thus it's very useful for being able to present the data visually to these people.  And we, of course, use visual presentations/images to be able to provide clarity and objectivity.  You can look at the data yourself and come to your own interpretation based upon what you see in the data.  And of course, one of the reasons we also use it is to support our written text because we to tell the particular story that we want to convey, and therefore we need to add the figures at just the appropriate places to support that story.