Transcript for:
Graphing with Error Bars Explained

I hope you guys know how much I love you because I was laying back trying to actually shut my eyes for a few minutes and I couldn't stop thinking about all the things I needed to do for AP um okay so what I want to do real quick is I want to go over the um graph that we did today in class for those who will be absent tomorrow I know the track meet is going on and several other things um several people said they wouldn't be there tomorrow so I want to make sure that everybody um hears this so that no one is left out so this is the graph that you were showing today I gave you a piece of graph paper I'm giving you credit for completion of this graph I do not want you to be penalized for getting it wrong I want you to be encouraged and I want you to actually try so that's why I am doing it this way but I do at the same time want you to try so I do want to see something on paper that you have attempted the first thing that I would suggest when it comes to this is we already know that since this is sorry okay that's good since we see this right here that means that we are going to have error bars okay so I want to make sure that I keep that in mind probably the first thing that I would do is I would actually go out to the side of these numbers and I would go ahead and add my standard error of the mean values to the actual values so that I know what my range is that's going to help you when it comes to making the graph that it's not a big deal to go off the graph a little bit but I saw several people today whose would have went off of the graph more than we would have liked to have seen so I want you to try to be able to avoid that so what I would do is go okay 170 plus 15 is going to be 185. and then the other side of that would be what 155 and then 190 plus 10 would be 200 and 190 minus 10 would be 180. go all the way through 150 140 and figure out your range um that would be 180 6 about ready here and one um 50. um 125 if I do this math wrong in my head just forgive me 95 uh 130. 120. um 120 and let's see that's 90. and then um 130 and 110 okay that way you already know your values and you don't have to worry about with your graph sitting there trying to do the math while you're looking at a graph that can get you know overwhelming so I would just go ahead and do this remember you can write on your paper they're only grading what you put on the graph and on the line so don't worry about all this Scribble that's not going to affect anything um the other thing you want to make sure that you do is you definitely want to label your axis um and I don't have a 20 by 20 grid here obviously to show you so I'm just gonna do the best that I can on this let me see if I can get a little bit thicker of a pencil going okay so this is going to be oh see that's not thick enough I don't like this when it's not thick I still not thick enough sorry uh yeah let's try that okay that's a little better all right so here's my graph I'm gonna scoot all this over just a little bit um we are going to do individual first so individual is going to go on my x-axis that is going to be my individual independent variable remember that an individual person that you are testing that is something that you can choose the blood glucose level is going to be dependent on the individual that you choose so your individuals are going to go on the bottom make sure you label that and then you've got eight individuals so I would go ahead and go across the bottom one two three four five six seven eight remember that all of your numbers have to be in even intervals not a big deal there but when we go up to the side in just a second I think you'll see a little bit better of what I mean by that so then the other I would or the other thing that I would do is I would go ahead and label your side too so I would label average whatever they have written is what I would write blood glucose and I would even write the unit level um I'm not gonna let's see I'm not gonna have a ton of room milligrams DL I think something like that okay you don't have to write plus minus two standard error to mean but if it's got the um the um yeah I did that okay sorry if it's got the unit written that I would also include that is whatever they've got written in that box I would that's what I would label the side of your craft just to be on the safe side um and then from here you are going to figure out your numbers now the lowest number that we have on this graph is going to be this 90 right here if you notice the highest number that we're going to have is going to be um 200 right here so you're going to need to go from 90 to 200. um I would leave out from 90 to zero remember there's no issue with drawing a break in the graph so if you're going to do that all you need to do is make those two little lines or that squiggly line whatever however you do that just something to indicate that you're breaking the graph and I would start right there at 90 and then I would probably go up by I would probably do tens 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 and 60. you might I mean remember you've only got 20 spaces um so you might could go up by fives you would just have to count it out and see how much extra room you have um I would I would not think at all you would be able to go any smaller than fives um but like I said you would just have to count and see um how you would do that and since I don't have those 20 spaces here I'm just going to stick with 10. they would not Mark you wrong if you did 10 as long as it's evenly spaced okay um that's the main thing that you've got to keep in mind you can't do any crazy you couldn't go from like 90 to 97 to 102 to 112 nothing like that it's got to be even intervals all the way up okay so right now looking at this graph if you didn't plot a thing you would already have two points for labeling your graph and for evenly spacing your numbers okay from here you're just going to plot okay so you're going to go at individual one we see the individual one is blood glucose of 170 so I'm going to find individual 1 I'm going to write or draw a DOT and then I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to make my error bars just to be safe just to make sure there's not too much overlap from side to side you might space out one through eight a little bit more than I did maybe again remember that you've got 20 spaces to work with so you could definitely get some more space and between one through eight remember I'm using just a bare screen that doesn't have those grids so space that out a little bit so that you don't start getting your stuff overlapping over too much and it gets too messy so the air bars that are going to go with individual one is going to go up to 185 so that's about right here down to 155 so that's about right here I know that's a really messy 160 and this is not quite to scale so that doesn't look quite even but you get my point okay obviously with the Grid it's going to be more scaled and look more even so then number two is at 190 so we're going to put a dot at 190 that's going to go up to 200 down to 180 and there's our error bar okay number three is going to be 145 so right in between the 140 and 150 it's going to go up to 150 and it's going to down to 140. so there's your error bar then number four is um 165. so I'm going to find 165 which is about right there it's going to go up to one 80 and down to 150. um then 110 and make sure I'm gonna try yeah number five goes with 110 so that's going to be down here and we'll go up to 125 so about right here and down to 95 so about right here and again like I said this is not the scale because I know that that error bar is not proportionate on the top and the bottom um number let's say six is 125. so right here number seven is 105. so like right here and then number eight is 120. and now I'm just going to go add those last three error bars so number six at 125 only goes up to 130 and 120. um number seven 105 goes up to when uh 20 and down to 90. that's not perfect and then 130 and 110. so something like that okay um so that's pretty much what your bars would end up looking like okay except obviously since it's on a gridded graph it will hopefully look neater than that at this point it's probably going to ask you questions about whether it is um statistically significant difference or not remember if the error bars overlap then it is a statistically different statistical difference if it does not overlap then it will not be so for instance um one and two there's no statistical difference between one and two because their error bars do overlap same for three and four same for really five six seven and eight but if we look at one and two and compare one and two to five and six then there is a statistical difference because those two error bars right here don't overlap with these two error bars right here okay so it just depends on how the question is working it might ask you to compare one two five six it might ask you just to compare one and two I you just don't know but remember overlapping error bars so let's go ahead and write this down just to make sure we remember overlap in the air bars there's no statistical difference okay that means those numbers are pretty close to each other and then no overlap in the error bars then there is a statistical difference and then also last thing that I want to go over really really quickly about this a couple of pointers just make sure that you draw those dots really dark so they can see the dots they need to be able to see the dot through your error bar line okay they also need to see the top and the bottom of the air bar um make sure you can do statistical not statistical difference um I can't think off the top of my head if there's anything else that right there would get you four points on the graph even if you know absolutely nothing about the question that should be an easy four points if you can do this now not all of your um error bars are going to be that cut and dry like 170 plus 15 is 185 and 170 minus 15 is 155. there could be times where you might see these numbers right here be like a decimal and if that's the case then that's when you need to get out your calculator and you need to take the time to add whatever that number would be to your value and subtract whatever that number would be to your value but do what I did and write it out here to the side to keep yourself clear save yourself a little time in the front end and then that way when you get over here to the side you don't have to worry about anything you've already got the numbers written down for you all you've got to do is slop down those bars now they are going to look to see if they're in the right place if it if it is um I mean there's there's no way that they can make sure if it's decimals that it is right at .05 above the dot okay so you're getting really really really Ticky if you're thinking they're going to get that close but if that error is that small then that air bar should be really really close to that line remember that okay so if your standard error of the mean is a small standard error the mean but you've got your bar drawn this big that's not right so you do need to make sure that they are proportionate to whatever that standard of the error standard error of the mean is the last thing just to make sure you understand what standard error of the mean is um just to review from the beginning of the year let's just take this one over here because it's not messed with um this is the average number of that measurement okay whatever your measurement could be it could be a varying amount of things this is the average number okay what it is saying is that this is the average but every individual in that population may not hit that average number it could fall in between this range and this range so this is the average but all of the population should fall in between this bar somewhere that's what standard error of the mean is telling you you're plotting an average number but you can't guarantee that every individual in that population will hit that average on the dot so therefore we have a range of what's considered acceptable okay all right I hope that information helped you if you're not in class on Friday please please take the time to look over this um and let me know if you have any questions in class thanks