Early Human Development 117 (2018) 110–112

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Early Human Development

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/earlhumdev

WASP (Write a Scientific Paper) using Excel – 3: Plotting data T

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The plotting of data into graphs should be a mandatory step in all data analysis as part of a descriptive statistics
Software exercise, since it gives the researcher an overview of the shape and nature of the data. Moreover, outlier values
Computers may be identified, which may be incorrect data, or true outliers, from which important findings (and publica-
Statistics tions) may arise. This exercise should always precede inferential statistics, when possible, and this paper in the
Biostatistics
Early Human Development WASP series provides some pointers for doing so in Microsoft Excel™.

1. Creating a graph

The plotting of data into graphs should be a mandatory step in all data analysis since it gives the researcher an overview of the shape and nature
of the dataset at hand. Moreover, outlier values may be identified. These may be incorrectly input values, or more excitingly, true outliers, from
which important findings (and thence publications) may arise.
Excel has several different types of graphs (which are referred to as charts), each with its own pros and cons. To insert a chart, select the cells that
you wish to plot including column and row headers (if any). From the Insert tab, click on the desired Chart option. If uncertain which type of chart
best suits the data at hand, Excel also has a Recommended Charts button which previews the charts available using the selected data. Do remember
that charts are automatically created via the pivot charts option as noted in the previous paper in the series [1].
Charts should be chosen wisely. It is, for example, inappropriate to create a chart which depicts just two or three values, say, a pie chart. This type
of information can just be given as numerical values in the results section. Similarly, a pie chart would be inappropriate for the depiction of six
categories, of which 3 are rare – the smaller categories would almost disappear within the pie chart. On the other hand, more complex data might be
better placed in a table than in a complex graph as a well-designed table can be viewed in separate sections via different rows and columns while a
graph is necessarily viewed in-toto.
Always keep one key point in mind: if you were the reader (or the editor), how would you like to see the data at hand presented? One should not
create a chart just because one can but because one needs to.

2. Customising a graph

After creating a graph, it may altered or customised as required from the Design and Format tabs. Chart elements may be incorporated if needed,
and these include a title within the chart itself, a legend, gridlines, tick lines and so on. Various chart elements may be added with one click using one
of Excel's predefined layouts using the Quick Layout command, and then choosing the desired layout from the drop-down menu. Yet another way is
clicking the Chart Elements Button that appears as a plus sign to the top right of a graph whenever a graph is selected (Fig. 1). The elements already
present are checked – check or uncheck as required. Other quick options that become available on selecting a chart are formatting options and data
filtering (Fig. 1).
Rows and columns may also be switched with the Switch Row/Column command. Different dependent variables may also be plotted separately
on the two Y axes. This may be done by right-clicking on the variable that one desires to plot on the secondary Y axis (the one on the right hand side
of the chart as opposed to the primary Y axis that is located on the left of the chart).
A graph may also be created from scratch by first using Insert-Table and choosing the desired format, then Select-Data. Yet another way of
creating a Chart is to use the Quick Analysis Tool that appears at the bottom right of selected rows. If it is desired that a graph is to appear on its own
sheet in a workbook, right click and choose the move chart option to new sheet.

3. Usefulness

Two practical examples of the importance of chart plotting will be given. Table 1 shows total births in Finland for 1953–1962. A cursory
inspection may note the overall declining trend but may miss the significant outlier value of 1958 as depicted in Fig. 2, which was associated with the

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earlhumdev.2018.01.004

0378-3782/ © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

 Early Human Development 117 (2018) 110–112

Fig. 1. Shortcuts available when a graph is selected.

Table 1
Total births in Finland, 1953–1962.

Year Births

1953 90,866
1954 89,845
1955 89,740
1956 88,896
1957 86,985
1958 81,148
1959 83,253
1960 82,129
1961 81,996
1962 81,454

92000

90000

88000
Live births

86000

84000

82000

80000
1953 1955 1957 1959 1961
Year
Fig. 2. Total births in Finland for 1953–1962 [1].

Sellafield nuclear reactor fire in 1957 and its radioactive fallout [2].
Similarly, Table 2 shows live birth data by sex for Cuba for 1960–1985, along with ratio of male:total births and 95% confidence intervals for this
ratio. It is only when the ratio and its confidence intervals are plotted that significant outlier values become manifest. (See Fig. 3.) These occurred in
temporal association with the enactment of laws in the United States that facilitated the migration of Cubans from the island to the mainland United
States [3]. These outlier values were true outliers in Cuban national demographic databases. However, outliers may also indicate erroneous data,
which is important to track down and correct prior to performing formal analyses which will produce equally erroneous results.
The next paper in this series explains how to access to Microsoft Excel's Analysis Tookpak and provides some pointers for the utilisation of the
histogram tool, which also results in a graphical form of output [4].

111
 Early Human Development 117 (2018) 110–112

Table 2
Males divided by total live births for Cuba, 1960–1985.

Year 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972
M 110,201 120,303 133,790 131,738 135,533 135,498 130,253 131,513 127,118 123,160 121,875 131,733 127,610
F 104,699 114,297 127,110 125,162 128,767 128,477 125,160 123,798 119,689 114,935 115,144 124,281 120,387
Tot 214,900 234,600 260,900 256,900 264,300 263,975 255,413 255,311 246,807 238,095 237,019 256,014 247,997
UCI 0.515 0.515 0.515 0.515 0.515 0.515 0.512 0.517 0.517 0.519 0.516 0.516 0.517
M/T 0.513 0.513 0.513 0.513 0.513 0.513 0.510 0.515 0.515 0.517 0.514 0.515 0.515
LCI 0.511 0.511 0.511 0.511 0.511 0.511 0.508 0.513 0.513 0.515 0.512 0.513 0.513

Year 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985
M 116,228 104,431 99,249 96,469 87,056 75,426 73,879 69,819 70,101 82,220 85,251 85,601 92,854
F 109,777 98,635 93,692 91,086 81,904 71,216 69,672 67,081 66,110 77,539 80,396 80,680 89,213
Tot 226,005 203,066 192,941 187,555 168,960 146,642 143,551 136,900 136,211 159,759 165,647 166,281 182,067
UCI 0.516 0.516 0.517 0.517 0.518 0.517 0.517 0.513 0.517 0.517 0.517 0.517 0.512
M/T 0.514 0.514 0.514 0.514 0.515 0.514 0.515 0.510 0.515 0.515 0.515 0.515 0.510
LCI 0.512 0.512 0.512 0.512 0.513 0.512 0.512 0.507 0.512 0.512 0.512 0.512 0.508

Fig. 3. Males divided by total live births for Cuba, 1960–1985 [2].

Acknowledgments

The inspiration for this series of papers arises from Thomas Douglas Victor Swinscow's original series of papers in the 1970s entitled “Statistics at
Square One” [5] as well as the Excel-based statistics talks prepared for the international Write a Scientific Paper course (WASP – http://www.ithams.
com/wasp) [6, 7].
I would also like to thank Dr. Neville Calleja (Director at Department of Health Information & Research - Department of Health Information &
Research, Ministry of Health, the Elderly and Community Care) for reviewing these manuscripts.

Conflict of interest statement

There are no known conflicts of interest associated with this publication and there has been no significant financial support for this work that
could have influenced its outcome.

References

[1] V. Grech, WASP (Write a Scientific Paper) using Excel - 2: Pivot tables, Department of Paediatrics, Del Hospital, Malta, 2018, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.earlhumdev.2018.01.003.
[2] V. Grech, Births and male:female birth ratio in Scandinavia and the United Kingdom after the Windscale fire of October 1957, Int. J. Risk Saf. Med. 26 (1) (2014) 45–53.
[3] V. Grech, The influence of migration on secular trends in sex ratios at birth in Cuba in the past fifty years, West Indian Med. J. 63 (4) (May 5 2014) 372–376.
[4] V. Grech, WASP (Write a Scientific Paper) using Excel – 4: Histograms, Early Hum. Dev. (2018), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.earlhumdev.2018.01.005.
[5] T. Swinscow, Statistics at square one, Br. Med. J. 1 (6020) (1976) 1240.
[6] V. Grech, S. Cuschieri, Write a Scientific Paper (WASP) - a career-critical skill, Early Hum. Dev. (2018), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.earlhumdev.2018.01.001 pii: S0378-3782(18)
30005-7.
[7] V. Grech, WASP – write a scientific paper course: why and how, J. Vis. Commun. Med. 40 (3) (Jul 2017) 130–134.

Victor Grech
Department of Paediatrics, Mater Dei Hospital, Malta
E-mail address: victor.e.grech@gov.mt

112