A citation or reference is a short description of a resource that is used in a paper or project. Whenever you refer to an idea that is not originally yours, or quote someone else's work, you must give credit to the originator by citing that source in your paper. You should also provide documentation for any facts or figures you use that are not common knowledge. All the sources you use will be compiled into a list at the end of your paper. This is called a Bibliography, Reference List, or Works Cited.
A citation or reference includes all the information needed for someone to identify and find the resource. There are 4 main parts to every citation: Author, Date, Title, & Location. Depending on the citation style, a citation may include any of the following: title, author, date, page numbers, publisher, place of publication, etc.
Misleading Graphs
Numbers don’t lie. Or do they? If you remember from last semester statistics is about the manipulation of data. If one can manipulate the data they can certainly manipulate the way it is visualized and displayed. While this happens more in business and politics than medicine often times the scientists who write papers do not involve a trained statistician. Thus, you need to be able to recognize when data is being misrepresented whether intentionally or accidentally.
Elements of Good Graphs
The best method of creating a good graph I’ve seen is the one taught by my biostatistics professor from UAB, Dr. Austin. Her checklist includes the following elements:
Here is an example of a graph I created for a class project following her instructions:
Watch Elliot Noma’s talk “How to Lie With Charts.” From 2:45 until the 31 minute mark.