Incorporating Tables and Figures

Effectively Into Your Writing

1. The essential basic elements
The main text should:
(a) tell the reader when to look at a table or figure (and so this reference should appear before the
table of figure in single column text);
(b) introduce the contents of the table or figure;
(c) point out any key features or trends which the reader should take a note of;
(d) draw a conclusion from the table or figure which answers the “So what?” question. (Schematics
of experimental apparatus are one exception to this guideline.)
Topic sentence to introduce the
topic of the paragraph.
Example 1 “As Table 1 shows, …” would
rarely be a useful topic sentence.
One measure of social disadvantage is relative access
to primary health care. As Table 1/Fig. 1 shows, in (a)
comparison to capital city residents, Woop Woop’s (b) and (c). Note that the important
main residents have significantly lower per capita access feature is only described qualitatively, as
text to both GPs and pharmacists. This suggests that to given any actual numbers here would
governments should look at ways of encouraging more be redundant and potentially confusing
doctors and pharmacists to move to rural areas. to the reader.
(d)

Table 1. Access to primary health care providers in rural Woop Woop is  Table has a descriptive title
significantly lower than in capital cities.* which is numbered for easy
Woop Woop Capital City Average referencing within the text
and to also help the reader
GPs per 100,000 75.6 103.4 easily find the table
referred to.
Pharmacists per 100,000 52.0 62.5
 Note that titles are
* Source: AIHW (1996). generally found on top of
the table.
 Note also that if a table or
figure is not your original
creation, you must cite its
source.

 Figure has a descriptive caption which is numbered

for easy referencing within the text and to also help
the reader easily find the figure referred to.
 Note that captions are generally found below the
figure.
Figure 1. Access to primary health care providers  Again, if a figure is not your original creation, you
in rural Woop Woop is significantly lower than in must cite its source.
capital cities (AIHW, 1996).  Note that when referencing the source, “adapted
from” would only be used if you have changed the
Tables versus Figures: original in some way.
 tables are more precise but can take more work from the
reader to interpret;  Note also that the caption does not include “Bar
 graphs and charts are less precise but are generally chart of ...” as that would be redundant. It can take
much easier to interpret qualitatively. a conscious effort to write captions which don’t
Which is better to use in any given circumstance depends include redundant “Graph of / Bar chart of” etc.
on the writer’s objectives and the reader’s perceived needs.
D.R. Rowland, Student Services, The University of Queensland 1
2. Figure captions and labels should be used to help the reader
understand what they are looking at Topic sentence to introduce the
topic of the paragraph. In this
Example 2 case a reference to a figure (not
provided) appears
The rotary lawn mower (Fig. 1) is an ancient piece of parenthetically in the topic
technology used by the Suburbites to ... (ref. 1). The sentence.
design of the cutting blade assembly, illustrated in Fig. 2, (a) reference to figure shown below
shows a number of design features which illustrate the
main
engineering sophistication of this civilisation. For (b) introduction to contents of figure
text
example, the cutting blade was not held fixed in place, but
was allowed to swivel on a recessed bolt, thus allowing it (c) important features to pay
to swivel out of the way if something hard is hit, protecting attention to
the blade from damage. Note also ... (d) conclusion to be drawn from
the figure

Important features labelled for easy Note the use of a scale bar to help the reader gauge
cross referencing in the figure caption. how big the object they are looking at is.

Figure 2. Underneath views of a lawnmower looking Caption notes:

1 2 3
at the cutting blade design. (a) Side view 1. General description of what is shown in the
illustrating how the bolt holding the cutting blade is figure.
4
recessed (labeled A) and how the rear edge of the 2. Each component part needs to be explained to
blade is bent upwards to lift cut grass and create a the reader.
4
fan to blow the cut grass into the catcher (labeled B) . 3. To help the reader interpret what they are
3
(b) View from beneath again illustrating the recessed looking at, they need to know from what
bolt (labeled A) together with a polished part direction they are viewing the object.
5
indicating the location of wear (labeled C). 4. To make it easy for the reader to identify an
[Photos and design analysis provided by W. L. important design feature it has been labelled.
Rowland.] 5. The significance of what the reader has been
directed to look at needs to be explained.

Four basic ways to refer to your tables and figures in the main text:
1. (a) As shown in Table 3, … / As can be seen from Fig. 2, … / As indicated in Fig. 6-4, …
(b) The result of X was Y, as shown in Fig. 3.
2. Regarding the question of …, the data in Table 5 shows that …
3. The factor loadings for the four factors are given in Table 9.
4. As hypothesised, it was found that Group A performed significantly better on the test
than Group B (Table 7). OR … (see Table 7).

D.R. Rowland, Student Services, The University of Queensland 2

Example 3

Axes labelled and units given.

Figure 1. Time dependence of drug concentration in the blood (solid curve). The
horizontal dashed line indicates the minimum efficacious concentration and hence the
point A indicates the latest time at which more drug should be administered if
continuous effectiveness is to be achieved.
Significance of different line types explained.
Often, different sets of data are indicated by different
symbols such as open and closed diamonds and
triangles. A legend should explain these.

3. Make your tables and figures as independent of the main text as

much as you can without making them excessively wordy
Do this because readers often try to read tables and figures independently of reading the main text, either because
they are taking a “short cut” or because on a later reading they are just looking for a specific piece of information.

Example 41 Simply writing – “Student

st
Table 2. The number of 1 year engineering students (N = 108) providing the indicated answers to the first
answer to the question of the units of each term in the differential equation diagnostic quiz question (N
dD dt  100  0.01D 2 shows that very few realise that the units of the terms in a = 108).” – does give the
differential equation need to be homogeneous. reader a very general idea
of what the contents of the
2
mg/hr* mg mg no units other no table are, but, to interpret
answer the table, the reader would
then have to search back
dD/dt 84 6 - 2 3 13 through the text to find out
100 10 74 - 6 6 12 what the diagnostic
question asked.
2
-0.01D 14 35 26 - 13 20

* The correct units for each term. Footnote: Help for the reader who may not know what the correct answer is.

M. Cargill & P. O’Connor (2009), Writing Scientific Research Articles: Strategy and Steps, pp. 25-26,
argue that “story telling” captions and titles are more communicative than simply descriptive
titles. Compare the title / caption in Example 1 with: “Rural-city comparison of access to primary
health care providers.”

1
Adapted from D.R. Rowland (2006), “Student difficulties with units in differential equations in modelling contexts,” Int. J.
Math. Educ. Sc. Technol. 37 (5), 553-558.

D.R. Rowland, Student Services, The University of Queensland 3

4. Error bars are critical for interpretation
Because of population variability, any sample only provides estimates of the actual population
characteristics a researcher is trying to measure. Consequently, there is always a certain amount of
“statistical uncertainty” in experimental results. When reporting experimental results graphically
therefore, “error bars” should be used to depict:
(a) how accurately you have measured something
(b) the amount of statistical uncertainty in a result (sample means only provide an estimate of
population means)
(c) the amount of natural variation there is in the population being measured.
Standard errors of the mean (SEM) and confidence intervals (CI) are generally used to depict (a) and
(b), while standard deviations (SD) are generally used to depict (c). Which you should use in any
given situation depends on what you want to show, but leaving them out suggests your data is much
more certain than it really is.
Since error bars could be SEMs, SDs or CIs, it is essential that in your caption you tell the reader what
type of error bar you have used.

Example 5
600 Without error bars, there is
no way to judge the
550 significance of the
differences in the means.
500

450

400

350
QLD Avge Aust. Avge

Figure 2. NAPLAN Grade 5 reading results for 2009 (error bars are standard deviations).

When comparing group means, authors generally provide SEMs or CIs as they can give some
idea as to whether any differences in means are statistically significant or not. In this case
though, the sample sizes are so large that the issue is not whether we can be sure there is a
difference, but how big is the difference compared to natural variation, the effect size, as
this gives some indication as to how difficult it might be to reduce the size of the gap. As
natural variation is measured by the SD, that is what has been given.

 Error bars with Excel: http://www.ncsu.edu/labwrite/res/gt/gt-stat-home.html

D.R. Rowland, Student Services, The University of Queensland 4