Exercise 05

Making better figures

Published

April 23, 2025

Modified

April 2, 2025

Dates

Due by Thursday, March 19, 2025.

Goals

  1. Read and understand published figure preparation guidelines for prospective authors of scientific manuscripts.
  2. Evaluate the guidelines relative to the best practices we’ve discussed this semester in class.

Assignment

Background

Some scientific journals provide advice to prospective authors about how to prepare figures for manuscripts submitted to the journals. Here are two examples:

Tasks

  1. Find and read critically the guidelines for publishing figures in a journal of your choosing.
  2. Compare the guidelines to the best practices that we have discussed this semester in class (Franconeri, Padilla, Shah, Zacks, & Hullman, 2021; Knaflic, 2015; Tufte, 2001).
  3. Do the guidelines reflect current knowledge about data visualization practices. If not how could the guidelines be amended to provide better guidance to authors in these journals?

Submit

A 3-5 pp (750-1,300 word) write-up of your findings.

Make sure to write a complete essay, with an introduction, body, and conclusion. See the feedback for Exercise 01 and feedback for Exercise 03 for other hints about how to improve your submission.

References

Franconeri, S. L., Padilla, L. M., Shah, P., Zacks, J. M., & Hullman, J. (2021). The science of visual data communication: What works. Psychological Science in the Public Interest: A Journal of the American Psychological Society, 22(3), 110–161. https://doi.org/10.1177/15291006211051956
Knaflic, C. N. (2015). Storytelling with data. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiliey & Sons.
Tufte, E. R. (2001). The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Graphics Pr.