Graphing

Few things in school science cause quite as many problems as creating appropriate science graphs. Rarer are graphs that allow you to gain further information from them - perhaps confirming predictions about your experiment.

The use of computers to assist in the graph-making process was heralded as a great leap in the armoury of a student to takle their coursework. However, the initial enthusiasm by teachers was short-lived; invariably the quality of graph is worse than would have been achieved by hand - often losing the student marks, despite the very obvious effort that went into making them.

The aim of this site is to provide instruction on how to use software that you have, to suggest alternatives, and to give guidance on graph creation.

Graphing

No matter what program you have to help you, everyone needs to understand why we produce graphs, and how to interpret them properly. Here's a basic guide, including paper to print out!

Log Graphs - essential for A-level candidates!

FREE Graph Paper! - all popular metric sizes!

The Trial

To assist in the decision of what software should be used, and how to use it, I have made three trials:

For each test, I have put five pieces of software to the test. I have made available below the data files for each test, if you want to test them on your own software:

(625 bytes!) Download Zip file of CSV file data!

Coming Soon...

I soon hope to be able to provide support for Microsoft Excel, which needs careful use if problems are to be avoided.