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11 - Guidelines for Data Presentation

from Part II - Micro-Challenges in Writing Papers: Presenting Your Ideas in Writing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 May 2026

Robert J. Sternberg
Affiliation:
Cornell University
Karin Sternberg
Affiliation:
Cornell University
Ophélie Allyssa Desmet
Affiliation:
Ball State University
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Summary

The goal of this chapter is to help you understand how to optimally present data. The chapter draws heavily on three sources to which we refer readers for more details. For the presentation of data in the form of tables, Andrew Ehrenberg’s A Primer in Data Reduction (2007) contains much good sound advice. For the use of figures, William Cleveland’s The Elements of Graphing Data (1994) is a style guide that is required reading for anyone considering using a graph, from the most junior undergraduate to the most experienced researcher. Good advice is also available in the works of Tufte (2001) as well as in the APA Manual (American Psychological Association, 2019).

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