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Scientific Writing. Table : Part-1. Some assumptions. You, the audience, between you know much more than I do about this Lao Tzu said: “Those who know do not speak/Those who speak do not know.”
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Scientific Writing Table:Part-1
Some assumptions • You, the audience, between you know much more than I do about this • Lao Tzu said: “Those who know do not speak/Those who speak do not know.” • What a silence had been established in the word if every person talk correlated with his/her knowledge (Kafka) • The rules of scientific writing have a lot of exceptions. We will discuss them in next sessions
Please don’t consider any of these suggestions to be substitutes for carefully thinking about your specific situation.
Outline: Table • General considerations • Table/text ratio • Relation of tables • Building a table
Tables : general considerations • At some point between the first draft and the final version, you must decide • Which tables you really need, • which tables you should replace by graphs, and • Which tables you should discard in favor of simply summarizing the data in the text. • you may change your mind later, but it is easier to delete tables before you get to the final version of the paper than to add them then.
Tables : general considerations • Keep in mind that many readers tend to skip the text or read only part of it. • If readers like your Abstract, they next examine the Tables and Figures
Tables : general considerations • Use the fewest tables and illustrations needed to tell the story. • In the results section, tables present data that support results. • Design figures and tables and figure legends and footnotes in parallel, so as to prepare the reader for the next table or illustration.
Tables : general considerations • It is important therefore that tables and illustrations • have strong visual impact, • are informative and • easy to comprehend, and • can stand alone.
DECIDING ON USE OFTABTESUses for Table • Presenting precise numeric values rather than just proportions or trends. • Presenting large numbers of related data compactly. • Summarizing information made clearer in a tabular form than in running text ("list tables"). • Presenting complex information more clearly than in running text or a figure. They provide the possibility of side-by-side comparisons of those facts. • to present individual data for all subjects and objects studied • to make a point by presenting summary data (for example, means with standard deviations).
Tables : general considerations • If the paper is to report clinical or laboratory research, an epidemiologic study, or a drug trial, you gathered analyzed numerical data in tables for a synopsis of your finding before you began to write. • If your paper is to be a review article, you may have compiled tables to help you pull together concise summaries of what you had read.
Each table should deal with a specific problem. • Many authors use tables to highlight small butimportant parcels of information. However, such information can be presented more effectively in text. • Count the number of distinct pieces of information you plan to include in your table. If there are fewer than five or six,text will suffice.
Such a table is illustrated in Figure 14.1. Do not use this kind of table in your paper; its content can be easily summarized in the text.
Of the 3 patients with negative penicillin skin-tests, I was positive to noxicillin. Of the 7 patients positive for penicillin, 2 were positive for noxicillin. The difference in noxicillin positive between the 2 penicillin groups is not statistically significant, Fisher's exact test (p>0.05). If you persist in using a large number of such simple tables in your paper, you give the editor the impression that you have spent little time in thinking about how to translate your meeting talk into a journal paper. Summarized in the text
Table/text ratio • If you are going to use tables, do not delay in finding out what numbers of tables the journal may allow for text of a particular length. • See information-for-authors • Do not submit tables as photograph. • Place explanatory matters in footnotes, not in the heading.
Table/text ratio • If it does not, look at papers in some recent issues, estimate the number of text words (excluding references), count the tables and illustrations (single or multipart figures), and calculate the number of tables and illustrations per thousand words of text.
Table/text ratio • If a typical paper in the journal has an estimated text length of 3300 words accompanied by 4 tables, the ratio of tables to text is 4/3.3 thousand or 1.2 tables per one thousand words of text. • If your paper has a text of about 4800 words, round this figure down to 4000. Then 4 x 1.2: 4.8 tables; in round numbers, 5 tables.
Table/text ratio • A useful general rule is no more than I table (or illustration) per 1000 words of text. • Because the average page of text in a manuscript with double spaced text and with l-inch (or 3-centimeter) margins usually runs to between 200 and 250 words, the rule can be stated roughly as no more than I table (or illustration) per 4 pages of manuscript text. • Some journals may accept a larger number of tables in relation to text length, but many will not because of the resulting difficulties in avoiding confusing page layouts.
The Logic • Thus the first step in deciding on use of tables is figuring the maximum number the journal will probably accept in relation to the length of the paper. • If you estimate that five tables and illustrations would be acceptable, and you will need one illustration, you will be able to use no more than four tables. • But will you really need the maximum number the journal might accommodate
The Logic • Peer reviewers and editors are likely to point out tables with so few data that they can be dropped in favor of giving the data in the text. • Tables are more expensive to compose than text, so editors are prone to ask authors to eliminate tables
Tables of Numerical Data • If you have read a short version of your paper at a research meeting, you may have shown some slides with simplified structures that made them easy for an audience to read rapidly. • That would have been good judgment a simple table can economically summarize and emphasize data for the desired effect on an audience.
Illustrations instead of table • Some tables should be dropped, nor to be replaced by text statements but by illustrations. • These are tables with data more important for their known or potential relationships than their precise values.
some tables should be dropped, nor to be replaced by text statements but by illustrations. These are tables with data more important for their known or potential relationships than their precise values. • 1) Data on two related variables: a dependent variable whose values are determined by an independent variable, such as maximum systolic blood pressure after different doses of epinephrine, or maximum blood levels of alcohol after different doses of whiskey.
some tables should be dropped, nor to be replaced by text statements but by illustrations. These are tables with data more important for their known or potential relationships than their precise values. • 2) Data on one or more variables changingthrough time, such as clinical data like temperature, blood pressure, leukocyte counts for a patient during a hospital stay. • Example:
some tables should be dropped, nor to be replaced by text statements but by illustrations. These are tables with data more important for their known or potential relationships than their precise values. • 3) Data important to the reader for the extent of their differences and how these differences might be related to unknown factors, such as differences in mortality rates for stomach cancer in the individual states of the United States.
When data are more important for their known or potential relationships than their precise values. • Data of these kinds can usually be presented more effectively in one or more types of illustrations: • graphs, • charts of patients' clinical courses; • epidemiologic maps; and • other types.
Use tables when the reader will want exact values for numerical data. • In a study that included measurements of serum electrolytes (sodium, potassium, chloride, calcium, phosphate, magnesium) and acid-base variables (pH, CO2, bicarbonate), some readers may be interested in carrying out their own calculations of relations among the data. • you could not meet these possible needs in the text without providing a long stretch of text crowded with numbers and hard to read. • Example:
The rules for use of tables with numerical data can be summarized • Do not use tables when the data can be summarized in the text with a few sentences. • Do not use tables when the relations of data to each other or to a time sequence can be shown more clearly in a graph than described in the text. • Do use tables when readers will want the exact values of more data than can be summarized in a few sentences of text.
Tables Instead of Text • In some papers, descriptive information (which can be summary statements, data, or both) may be more efficiently presented in a table than in the paper's main text. • Perhaps the most frequent uses of tables in place of text are • summarizing research reports in a review article or • case information in a case-series analysis.
Tables Instead of Text/case report • Full description of 5, 10, or more cases in the usual format of case reports can take up many pages of text. • An efficient solution may be a large table that gives for each case only the essential numerical data (age, weight, temperature, and laboratory-test values) and brief descriptive phrases for symptoms, physical findings, roentgenographic findings, and so on. • You might retain a full case report or two in the text to give the clinical "flavor" of the disease or syndrome.
Tables Instead of Text/case report • If your papers to be synoptic (a "teaching" article, a review), you can emphasize important points by listing in small tables the main features of a disease or syndrome, symptoms and signs of adverse effects, and differential diagnoses, such "list" tables often include the frequency or percentage of occurrence for each item; these additional data help to make clear the relative importance of the listed items.
Level of Exposure to Fine Particulate Matter and the Risk of Death from Cardiovascular Causes in Women.
Estimated Hazard Ratios for the Time to the First Cardiovascular Event or Death Associated with an Exposure Increase of 10 μg per Cubic Meter in the Level of Fine Particulate Matter (PM2.5).*
Changes in Glycated Hemoglobin and Fasting Plasma Glucose Levels during the 13-Week Study Period.
Plasma Aspartate Aminotransferase and Alanine Aminotransferase Concentrations during the Run-in Period, the Treatment Period and the Post-Treatment Follow-up Period
Relations of Tables • Check the relation of the remaining tables to the text to be sure that their sequence is correctly tied into the text sequence; then number the tables accordingly. Next consider the tables as a sequence, with appropriate relations to one another.
Relations of Tables • In many clinical papers the title of the first table may adequately identify the main subject of the paper, with shorter titles for the following tables. • Example : The first table, for example, in a review of 25 cases of puncture wound of the heart, might be titled "puncture wound of the Heart: clinical Features". • The second table might then be simply "operative Findings and Postoperative course". • !
Relations of Tables • A look-at the tables by themselves in the proposed sequence will help you judge whether the table, are understandable on their own (and they should be) and however their titles are related to one another.
