Product Description

Effective data presentation is an essential skill for anybody wishing to display or publish research results, but when done badly, it can convey a misleading or confusing message. This new addition to the popular “How to” series explains how to present data in journal articles, grant applications or research presentations clearly, accurately and logically, increasing the chances of successful publication.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #357237 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 120 pages

Review
"This book offers most excitement and is abound with promise." (Urology News, May/June 2009)

"The book casts a fresh light on many issues related to effective data presentation. The questions raised and ideas offered are thought–provoking, innovative and easily implemental ... .It is a small but powerful book which I firmly believe everyone would enjoy while reading in addition to learning." (Academici, April 2009)

"This book not only provides an enjoyable read, but also it reminds readers how and how not to display data. I strongly recommend this book for both medical researchers and inter–disciplinary readers, including empirical musicology." (Academici, February 2009)

  “This text would be an excellent primer for those who have the computer background for producing graphics but who lack training in the presentation of material.” (The American Statistician, February 2009)

“Effective data presentation is an essential skill … .This should be very helpful to the target audience. Good data presentation should contribute to publication and presentation.” (Doody′s Book Reviews)

From the Back Cover
Effective data presentation is an essential skill for anybody wishing to display or publish research results, but when done badly, it can convey a misleading or confusing message. This new addition to the popular “How to” series explains how to present data in journal articles, grant applications or research presentations clearly, accurately and logically, increasing the chances of successful publication.

Packed with real examples from scientific literature, this instructive handbook describes appropriate methods for displaying a variety of quantitative information using both graphs and tables, to enhance the interpretation of scientific research. Examples of bad presentation highlight the pitfalls of data display and will ensure that readers never fall into the same traps!

Written in a readable and accessible style, How to Display Data is a must–have guide for anyone who needs to present data in journal articles, grant applications, or at research meetings.

Clear and accurate presentation of data is an essential part of medical publication. Currently the standard in journals and at conferences is poor. This short and easy–to–use book shows you how to present data clearly and logically, helping you to get your submission accepted. It has plenty of examples of good and poor data display, and the final chapter reviews existing software.

About the Author
Jenny Freeman, Lecturer

Stephen Walters, Senior Lecturer

Mike Campbell, Professor

The Medical Statistics Unit, University of Sheffield, UK

Customer Reviews

Review from Urology News, May/June 2009.
The "How to......" series from BMJ books published by Blackwell, who of course are now Wiley Blackwell are an excellent set of books with a common style and a uniform format. As such many comments and observations are applicable across the range. First and foremost these books are nearly all the same handy size, each a different colour and look good on the shelf.

With the exception of the front cover these books are a world of black and white, even the boxes of importance are a sparkling shade of grey! We are all too aware of the global thought in relation to colour publications: The rainbow is in!!

This book offers the most excitement and is abound with promise. Would it offer up the secrets of the fabled complication free procedure with a 100% success rate? (i.e.: would it teach me how to lie and deceive?) Sadly not, but it did divulge the secrets of scatter plots, regression analysis, ROC and spider plots along with a few other methods of data display which quite honestly sounded like Caribbean cocktails such as Lowess smoothing and Box-whisker plots!
Fortunately this book kicks off with the humble bar chart and progresses on with the invaluable aid of a plethora of examples and diagrams. Each of the nine chapters has a concluding summary and a reference list at the end but there is no denying that for a non academic, this is hard work and undoubtedly falls into the "one chapter at a time" category. A valuable book, but certainly not a joy.

Reviewer: Ian Pearce, Consultant Urological Surgeon.

If it's this easy, why do we keep getting it wrong?
Displaying data clearly is so important, but how many times have we seen charts and tables that we can't make head nor tail of? Written mainly from the perspective of presenting health-related information, the chapters are illustrated with scores of useful examples. The book will be of use to students and researchers on health-related courses, as well as statisticians and information analysts. I've added it to my course reading lists and will be recommending it to students and colleagues. It's written very clearly with no scary formulae or stats speak. This book leaves us with little excuse to continue presenting poor graphs and tables.