Graphs

Question 1

Success criteria for drawing charts

Answer 1

Your graph must have an informative title (i.e. it must state whether it shows a difference or a relationship and identify the operationalised IV and DV or co-variables)

The display must be appropriate (i.e. bar chart or scatter graph).

Both axes must be clearly labelled using the operationalized DV or co-variables and scaled correctly.

The IV goes on the x-axis and the DV goes on the y-axis for bar charts

The data must be plotted accurately and neatly – remember to use means or percentages for ordinal/interval data on bar charts.

Question 2

What is a table graph?

Answer 2

Raw scores displayed in columns and rows.

A summary paragraphs beneath the tables explain the findings and draws conclusions.

Question 3

Give an example of a summary paragraph for a table graph?

Answer 3

Example: We can see from the mean values, there were more words spoken on average in the five minutes following the consumption of energy drink (119 mean words) than the water drink (96 means words). This suggests that drinking an energy drink makes people more talkative than drinking water.

The standard deviation is higher in the SpeedUpp condition (53.8) suggesting that there was a larger spread of scores than in the water group condition (35.8). This suggest that not all participants were equally affected by the energy drink. In the water group scores were clustered around the mean to a greater degree.

Question 4

Give an example of a summary paragraph for a table graph?

Answer 4

Example: We can see from the mean values, there were more words spoken on average in the five minutes following the consumption of energy drink (119 mean words) than the water drink (96 means words). This suggests that drinking an energy drink makes people more talkative than drinking water.

The standard deviation is higher in the SpeedUpp condition (53.8) suggesting that there was a larger spread of scores than in the water group condition (35.8). This suggest that not all participants were equally affected by the energy drink. In the water group scores were clustered around the mean to a greater degree.

Question 5

What is a bar chart?

Answer 5

Categories (discrete data) are usually placed along the x-axis and frequency on the y-axis (or can be reversed).

The height of each column represents the frequency of that item.

Question 6

What is a histogram?

Answer 6

Bars touch each other (in a bar chart they don’t) – data is continuous rather than discrete.

Shows the DISTRIBUTION of a set of continuous data

There is a true zero.

Question 7

What is distribution?

Answer 7

variety of scores; which scores were the most common in a set of data

Question 8

What is continuous data?

Answer 8

usually a measurement, data which must be in a particular order (e.g., time in seconds or height in cm increasing from left to right), where a score can be anything within the range. E.g., your height in cm could be 156.3cm – doesn’t need to be a whole number.

Continuous data is the measurement of one variable within a population (e.g., the ages of children on a bus).

Question 9

What is discrete data?

Answer 9

DISCRETE DATA , which is non-continuous (in no order) and is often known as CATEGORICAL DATA: e.g., if I were to count the number of pets different students have (how many dogs, cats, etc) or time how long it takes you to run a distance with and without music (two conditions = two categories).

Question 10

Understand this

Answer 10

Question 11

How is correlational data presented?

Answer 11

Correlations are different to experiments as they do not involve the manipulation of variables.

When presenting correlational data, we use SCATTERGRAPHS

Question 12

What is a scattergram/graph?

Answer 12

Used for correlational analysis. Each dot represents one pair of related data. Illustrates strengths and direction of correlation.

The data on both axes must be continuous.

Question 13

What don’t scattergrams show?

Answer 13

Scattergrams do not show differences, but it shows associations between co-variables. Either of the co-variables occupies the x-axis and the other the y-axis (it does not matter which) and each point on the graph corresponds to the x and y positions of the co-variables.