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Dr. Dan’s Guide to Making  Beautiful Lab Reports using  

Microsoft Word and Excel 2007 

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Preface  I enjoy reading your laboratory reports! To help me enjoy them even more, please read this document carefully and make an effort to become an even more skilled writer. Understand, MOST introductory biology course lab reports are poorly written; so, do not feel bad when you get your first, second, or even third one back and it is bleeding red. You will get better. The purpose of lab reports is not only to determine whether or not you learned associated material but to assess your ability to communicate your findings. There is a rather unique way for writing about science, and these lab reports are for you to begin to learn it.

What follows is more about the mechanics of how to write a report more than what should be included in it. Use your laboratory handouts to determine the content of what your instructor wants you to include.

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1. What Goes Here?....................................................................................................4

Chapter 2. Making Beautiful Tables Using Microsoft Excel 2007……………….….....……9

Chapter 3. Making Beautiful Figures Using Microsoft Excel 2007 ………………..…….…22

Chapter 4. “Fluff”:Getting Rid of Extra Words…………………………………………..…33

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Chapter 1

What Goes Here? Reporting science has evolved into what is commonly referred to as the “IMRD” method. This acronym stands for Introduction (I), Methods (M), Results (R), and Discussion (D). This is the standard way you should construct you lab reports. You should have no other sections unless specifically instructed to do so. This means no separate “Hypotheses”, “Materials”, or “Conclusions” section. While not part of the acronym for most writing there is also a Abstract section, which summarizes the main points of your paper.

1.1. Abstract

An abstract is a single paragraph of approximately 200-250 words that is a miniversion of your report. It should include the most important part(s) of each of the sections of the paper. Begin with the most important information in the Introduction, followed by the most important information in the Methods, your main Results, and finish with the most important part of the Discussion. The most common mistake with the Abstract is forgetting to summarize one or more of these sections, often the Discussion. You should think of it as a sales pitch to get others to read the rest of the paper. Save the Abstract to write until the very last.

1.2. Introduction

Always remember: “Well begun is half done”. There should be three tasks you perform in the Introduction: establish common ground create a disruption promise a resolution. These ideas are from the very excellent book The Craft of Research written by Wayne Booth, Gregory Colomb, and Joseph Williams. Here is the precise outline they give, which is admittedly mechanistic; however, once you flesh it out with details it will not seem to be. Besides, once you learn the general rules, you can learn when/where it might be appropriate to break them. Write the Introduction in the following order:

I. Establish Common Ground

A. Opening Moves. Begin writing the Introduction with a general statement, an event, anecdote (i.e., some case where knowing the topic of your report may have been helpful), or a provocative fact. You would like to generate a hook to grab the reader’s attention. This should be the first sentence or two of the Introduction.

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B. Context. Next, you want to establish a shared understanding about the topic and state explicitly taken-for-granted background. What does the lab manual, text book, or journal articles state in general about your topic. This should be one paragraph and include one or more references to your textbook, lab material, journal articles, or other materials. If you do not include references in this section, you will be docked points.

II. Disruption. This is the next major section of your Introduction. Your objective here is to

generate a “research problem”. After all if you and everyone else already knew what was going to happen when adding ATP+salt to rabbit muscle, it would not be worth your time doing the experiment.

A. Denial. You have established the common background and context. Now you are

going to “disrupt” this by ending the “Context” paragraph above with a sentence or two, which should begin with one of the following words or one like it: but, however, or on the other hand.

B. Statement of the Problem. This should be a single paragraph. Here you will explicitly bring the problem to light that you hope to solve with your research. There are two separate sections for this part of the introduction. Give each one to a few sentences attention. 1. Condition of ignorance or misunderstanding. State some condition of

incomplete knowledge or flawed understanding even if it is only by you. In reality, the scientific community knows what will happen when adding ATP+salt to glycerinated rabbit muscle, but you probably do not. Think of your community of readers as your peers. What is the state of incomplete knowledge or flawed understanding of the freshman biology class with respect to how muscles contract? What is it about your subject (e.g., muscle contraction) that is probably not completely understood by your peers?

2. Cost/benefits of continued ignorance. State the consequence of that flawed knowledge or understanding, as either its costs or the benefits of resolving it. If you do not learn this material and figure out why Actin and Salt are both necessary at this point of your education in the biological sciences, how is that going to cost in further understanding and using biology?

III. Resolution

A. Promise for Resolution. Convince your readers that you will shed light on the

condition of ignorance. This section should be one or two sentences. B. Hypotheses. The last sentence or two of your introduction should include your

hypotheses. What did you expect to happen prior to beginning the experiment?

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1.3. Methods

The Methods section should include enough information that a competent colleague could repeat the experiment you are writing about. Write the Methods section more like a narrative and less like a list of instructions. Tell us what you did, step by step. Since you already did the experiment, this section should be written in past tense. The order of details should be given in the order you perform them. Be sure that you report essential quantities used or units of measurement.

Probably the hardest lesson for you to learn with respect to writing the Methods section will be understanding what is essential information and what is not. Knowing that you collected the rabbit muscle from the instructor on a slide he had prepared is probably not essential. Knowing that you ended up using six fibrils of approximately the same size will be. I do not think it is important that you used a black sharpie or a scalpel to cut the muscle. I could have done the same thing with a green sharpie and a razor blade. It was, however, important to know that the muscle was glycerinated because this changed the chemical structure of muscle.

Do not use a separate Materials section unless specifically instructed to do so. Just include essential materials in the Methods as you go along.

This should be the easiest part to write and you should write it first. In fact, it is best if you can write it as you do the experiment.

Unless the experimental protocol has more than one part or is really complicated, you should only need a single paragraph for the Methods section.

1.4. Results

As you begin writing your Results section, forget about your tables and figures. Pretend like they do not even exist. In a short paragraph, report what you found, using quantitative terms and numbers to backup what you said happened. This section should be a paragraph unless there are multiple parts to the experiment. Then each part of the experiment can get a separate paragraph. In most cases, the Results section will be the shortest of the paper and will be only a single paragraph.

After you have written the Results section, then go back and refer to your tables and figures that contain a more detailed explanation of the result you wrote about. All that you need to do, is find the first sentence in your Results where you can connect the tables/figures to the Results you write about. At the end of the sentence, put, in parentheses the table/figure with a number to name their order. The only reference to tables/figures should be as “(Table 1)” or “(Fig. 1)”. Notice you do not spell out the entire word “Figure”, but instead “Fig.”. This is just convention and I do not know the reason for it. Also, note that the word “Table” and “Fig” are capitalized.

NEVER, NEVER, NEVER say something like “As you can see in Table 1…” or “Results for the experiment are given in Figure 1…”. If the word Table or Figure appears in the Results, it should be enclosed within parentheses.

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1.5. Discussion. Think of the Discussion as an inverted and more informed version of the Introduction. This is the section where you think about what you found and interpret your results. In other words, why did you find what you found and what does it mean? Follow the outline below:

I. Gist of solution. You reported earlier a research problem and promised a solution. Here is where you interpret your data in a way that provides for that solution. Were your hypotheses generally supported? If so, why did it work out that way? If not, what happened? This should be approximately a paragraph.

II. Larger significance/application. How is what you learned going to help solve other similar problems? How is what you learned going to enhance your understanding of biology as you continue to take classes at MSUM? This is a good place to get your literature cited in the Discussion. This should be roughly two or three sentences.

III. What is still not known. Here is where if there are still mysterious outcomes, or if some of your results were not clear, you should address them here. You only need a few sentences for this.

IV.Call for further research. What other research would help to understand better the problem better? How could your experimental design have been improved? In other words, if you were to redesign the experiment, what might you do different. This should be one or two sentences.

V. Closing fact. The last sentence should be a sentence of fact relevant to both the general topic of the paper and your analysis. For example, “Size is related to lifespan, and we were able to show elephants live longer than mice.”

1.6. Literature Cited

There are two concerns with the literature cited section. First, you need to cite it correctly in text. Second, you need to cite it correctly at the end of the report. You cite literature to give credit to authors who worked hard to generate scientific understanding. You will give a “short” citation in text and the “long” citation goes at the end of the report in the “Literature Cited” section. We will use the Name-Year system.

If you can at all help it, do not cite references on the internet even if you access a journal article on-line. You may not use internet information that is not peer-reviewed (e.g., Wikipedia).

Citing literature within the text (“Short Citations”)

Reference with a single author: (Brisch 2009) Reference with two authors: (Campbell and Reece 2008) Reference with more than two authors: (Lazarides et al. 1978)

The “et al.” is Latin for “and others”. Again, if there are two authors, use both their names. If there are more than two authors, you will use the “et al.” reference.

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The in text citation goes at the end of the sentence where the information is referenced. For example, “Myosin binds to Actin (Campbell and Reece 2008).”

Citing literature in the “Literature Cited” section (“Long Citations”)

Journal Article

Summers, K.E., and I.R. Gibbons. 1971. Adenosine tripphosphate-induced sliding of tubules in trypsin-treated flagella of sea-urchin sperm. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 68:3092-3096.

Book

Campbell, N.A., and J. B. Reece. 2005. Biology. 7th ed. San Francisco: Pearson Education.

Lab Handout/Provided Material

Brisch, E. 2009. Biology 111: Cell Motility – Flagellar Regeneration in Euglena. Moorhead (MN): Minnesota State University Moorhead.

1.7 Summary

Here is a seven paragraph outline for constructing the minimal lab report. You may have times when you need a little more than this, but this should be the minimum, and think really hard if it is really necessary to add more. You will not earn points for the number of words you produce.

Paragraph 1: Abstract Paragraph 2: Opening moves, Context, Denial (Introduction) Paragraph 3: Condition of Ignorance, Cost Ignorance/Benefit Resolution, Promise for Solution, Hypotheses (Introduction) Paragraph 4: Methods Paragraph 5: Results Paragraph 6: Gist of Solution (Discussion) Paragraph 7: Larger significance/application, What is still not known? Call for further research, Closing fact (Discussion)

For Results Briefs, you will skip Paragraphs 1-4. Therefore, the Results Brief will be approximately three paragraphs.

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Chapter 2

Making Beautiful Tables Using Microsoft Excel 2007

Tables provide quick access to collected data or summaries of data. In general, tables should use a Times New Roman font size 12, which is the same as the body of the rest of the text. There should be only three horizontal lines in the entire table. Column titles are centered, while text in the table proper is left-justified. Numbers in the table proper should be right-justified by indenting to be centered under column headings. Give your table a description that goes on the top of the table and shares the same margins as the table itself. To begin, simply type your data into the spreadsheet in a way that makes sense to you. You can change it later if it turns out to not be useful how you did it.

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2.1. Summarizing Data. Sometimes, in addition to creating tables to put into Excel, you will be required to summarize data in. Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet application, which means it functions as a sort of super calculator. Here is how to summarize some of these data.

The Mean. Click into a cell below the column of data you want to summarize and type =average( . At this point you can do one of two things. First, you can highlight all the data by clicking on the first cell and dragging to highlight the entire column with your mouse. Second, you can type in the range of cells to be used for the calculation. Excel uses letters to reference columns and numbers to reference rows. By typing B2:B13 you are telling Excel to highlight all the cells in the B column that are in rows 2 through 13. Either method will give you the same result. In practice, it is often easier to use the first method. After you put the cell reference into the open parenthesis, close the parenthesis and click Enter on your number pad. The whole thing should look like this prior to clicking Enter =average(B2:B13).

The Standard Deviation, Number of Samples, and Variance. Follow the same pattern as above except instead of using the “average” function you will use the function for the statistic you want. The functions are as follows:

Number of Samples is =count() Standard Deviation is =stdev() Variance is =var()

You can now label what is in each cell in Column A so that you will not forget what the numbers represent (see figure below).

Standard Error of the Mean (SE or alternatively SEM). The SE is generally the summary statistic we really want because it will allow us to calculate a confidence interval (see below) to

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compare different treatments. Unfortunately, there is not a function for computing the SE in Excel (or most other number crunching software!). We must do it using a composite function. Recall that the SE can be calculated as the standard deviation divided by the square root of the number of samples, or

SDSEn

=.

Method 1: Above we calculated the standard deviation using the stdev function and the number of samples using the count function. The only other function we need is the one for the square root; it is sqrt. If you already calculated the standard deviation and the number of samples, all you need to do is refer to the cells that contain their calculated value. The standard deviation we calculated earlier is in cell B17 and the sample size is in B16. So, I want to take what is in B17 and divide (/) it by the sample size stored in cell B16. It would look something like this:

Method 2: If we have not calculated the standard deviation or the number of samples, we can get the same result if we build the composite function in the cell itself. Notice that in the denominator we have a compound function, or a function within a function. We have embedded the function count(B2:B13) within another function =sqrt( ). This is common practice when you use Excel. Pay attention to the number of parentheses to make sure your calculations are correct. In practice, while the first method of calculating the SE might be easier, we generally only want the SE so we use this compound version. It would be a waste of time to calculate the sample size, standard deviation, and variance separately if we do not need it for something else.

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2.2. Applying Functions to New Columns. Often, as is the case with this report, you will want to repeat these calculations for each column of data. You could type in the commands separately for each column, but it is easier to drag the functions you already created to other columns. To do this, highlight all the cells that contain formulas you want to apply to other columns. Notice in the lower right hand corner of the box a little square appears. Use your mouse to position the cursor over that little square and notice the cross hairs for your mouse cursor go from being thin to thick. When you have the thick cross hairs, press and hold your left mouse button and drag to cover the other columns of data you want to apply the functions. Once you have covered the cells you want to apply the formulas to, release the mouse button. You have now transferred those functions to the other cells.

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2.3. Decimal Points.

Decimal points for raw data. If data were collected from different groups or different sources and there is not consistency in the number of decimal points recorded, make them consistent by using only as many decimal places as the group with the fewest reported decimal places. In this case, most groups measured to zero decimal places, while a few measured to one decimal place (e.g., 22.3). The fewest number of decimal places is, therefore, zero. You want all similar data measured the same; so, we need to round off the values collected by other groups that measured to an extra decimal point to the nearest integer. With these few data, it is probably easiest to just go to the cells and retype values, but when there are many data we can get Excel to do this for us.

Highlight all the cells for which you want to change decimal points and right click with your mouse. A dialog box appears from which you should choose Format Cells…. Another dialog box appears. Make sure the tab Number is chosen and under tab Number. You can now change the number of decimal places in the Decimal places list. In this case, we want to select 0 for no decimal places. Change this in the box from “1” to “0”

All the data should be shown with zero decimal places now.

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Decimal places for summary data. When we summarize raw data the general rule is to keep one extra decimal place than the raw data. For the raw data, we have zero decimal places. This means our summary of the data should be displayed with one decimal place. The procedure for doing this is the same as above. Highlight just the cells that contain your summary of the raw data. Right click; choose Format Cells…, make sure the Number tab is selected, choose Number under the category and in the Decimal places box change the value to 1.

This will ALMOST give you what you want; however, the sample size number should be a whole number. It doesn’t make sense to say we had 12.0 samples. Follow the same procedure as above to change this to make it so by highlighting only the cells with the “sample size” and reducing the number of decimal places to zero. If you did each step correctly, your data should now look like this:

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2.4. Table Font Style. We want the table font to match the font of the text in the body of the report, which is Times New Roman size 12. Make sure the Home tab is chosen at the top of the page. Highlight all the cells in the table. Go to the font type and size boxes and change them from Calibri 11 to Times New Roman 12.

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2.5. Adjusting the width of a cell. This can be done in one of two ways. Either we can use the autofit command or we can just hold the vertical line separating two columns and drag with our mouse.

Autofit. Highlight all the nonblank cells in your table. Make sure the Home tab is chosen. All the way to the right on the toolbar is a box entitled Format. Click on it to get the drop down menu. Click on Autofit Column Width. Excel now adjusted the columns to the cell with the widest data. You should now be able to see all the data in the table.

Making cells wider than the autofit. Often we want to create space in the table so that all the data are not bunched up. Convince yourself that you can manually adjust the width of the columns by clicking on the vertical line separating columns with your left mouse button and holding it in sliding it back and forth to your desired width. We will do this in one of the final steps of creating the table.

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2.6. Adding lines to separate header labels and denote the end of the table. If we copy and paste the table into Microsoft Word 2007 the correct way (shown below) the grid lines separating the cells in Excel will not show up, which is good. At this point if you copy and paste the correct way, in Microsoft Word 2007, it will look like this:

Group/Trial %ChangeA %ChangeB %ChangeCG1-1 50 40 0G1-2 50 40 0G2-1 55 35 0G2-2 43 35 0G3-1 22 27 0G3-2 30 28 0G4-1 42 31 0G4-2 40 33 0G5-1 32 11 0G5-2 41 33 0G6-1 37 21 0G6-2 37 20 0

Mean 39.9 29.5 0.0Sample size 12 12 12Standard deviation 9.3 8.6 0.0Variance 85.9 74.6 0.0Standard Error 2.7 2.5 0.0

As a general rule, in a table there should be ONLY three horizontal lines. There should be no vertical lines at all. We will do this in Excel using the “borders” button in the tool bar.

Header Row Lines. Select only the header row with your mouse. Make sure the Home tab is activated. Click on the box directly under the font name and size to reveal a drop down menu for Borders. We want only a single line over the top and a single line over the bottom; so, choose Top and Bottom Border. It will automatically add the lines.

Horizontal line at the end of the table. Sometimes tables will continue to more than one page. For that reason, tables will take a single horizontal line at the end of the table to indicate its end. Highlight the entire table. Go back to the Borders button and choose Bottom Border.

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2.7. Justifying Text/Numbers.

Justifying Column Headers/Table Text. In formatting lingo “justifying” means lining up data in your cells or on your page. Right justifying means all the text lines up at the right. Center justifying means it is centered. Left justifying mean text is all the way to the left. Simple justifying is done by highlight the cells you want to justify and then using the justification buttons at the top of the tool bar. Use these buttons to center the column headers. Text not in the headers should typically be left justified.

Justifying Numbers in Tables. Numbers in the text take some special formatting. We want numbers to be centered under the column headings but still be right justified. The buttons will not do this for us. We need a more advanced option. Select all the numbers in the table, and right click your mouse button. In the dialog box that appears, choose “Format Cells”. Click on the “Alignment” tab within the dialog box that appears. Under the Horizontal menu, select “Right (Indent)”. In the “Indent” you need to choose different numbers by trial and error to get the desired result. If you have not changed the cell width from the default size, usually “1” will work. The wider you make the cell, the higher this number should be.

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2.8. Finishing Touches.

Informative Column Headings. The headings for the columns are not very informative. “%ChangeA” could refer to anything. It would be better to label this with the actual treatments (i.e., ATP+Salt, ATP, and Salt). Simply click in the cell and type the name of the treatment.

Deleting Unnecessary Data. The column with the data for “Salt only” treatment is not very informative. All the entries in the column are zero. I will just delete this column and mention the fact that the “Salt alone” treatment did not show any contraction in the table description.

Reducing Bunching and Creating White Space. Finally, I am going to make the column width wider so there is less bunching of numbers. I do this by grabbing the vertical line and dragging to the desired width. Now my table is ready to import into Microsoft Word. If all the steps were completed correctly, your table should now look like this:

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2.9. Copy/Paste Special, Excel to Word. To import the table you made in Excel you are going to take a picture of it and treat the table as a picture. This means that you will not be able to format the table further once it gets into Excel; so, make certain the table meets your approval before doing this step. Copy all the cells in Excel you want to important into Word. Once you do, go to Word to the document you want to place the table. From the Home tab, choose “Paste”, then “Paste Special”. A dialog box will appear from which you should select “Picture (Enhanced Metafile)” and then OK. Now your table is correctly formatted and waiting for a description in Microsoft Word.

If everything went as planned, in your Microsoft Word documents you should see a nice picture of your table that looks like this:

Group/Trial ATP + Salt ATP G1-1 50 40G1-2 50 40G2-1 55 35G2-2 43 35G3-1 22 27G3-2 30 28G4-1 42 31G4-2 40 33G5-1 32 11G5-2 41 33G6-1 37 21G6-2 37 20

Mean 39.9 29.5Sample size 12 12Standard deviation 9.3 8.6Variance 85.9 74.6Standard Error 2.7 2.5

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2.10. Table description. The table description ALWAYS goes on the top of the table. This is different than figures (pictures and charts), which go below the figure. You do not need to rehash all of your methods in the description, but the reader should be able to understand what the data are without having to refer to the text. The table description should be the same font as in the body of the report and single or double spaced is fine. I single spaced the example.

Centering Table. Tables should be centered on the page and the margins for the table description should be the same as the width of the table. To center the table, click on the picture of the table; go to the toolbar and select the center justify button.

Justifying the Table Description. With the picture of the table centered, select the table description and click with your mouse and slide the tabs on the top ruler to match the margins of the table.

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Chapter 3

Making Beautiful Bar Graphs Using Microsoft Excel 2007

Usually the thinking goes “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”. This did not get to the desks of Microsoft employees when they redesigned Microsoft Excel 2003. The “new” Excel made it much more laborious to generate simple graphs. Excel has always had a reputation of generating “junky” charts, but not until the 2007 version came out did it really get to be a nuisance. Nonetheless, Microsoft rules the world; so, if we want to be productive with the software it is their way or the highway! Making charts in MS Excel 2007 is easy; what takes time and frustration is getting rid of “chart junk” and producing a pleasing graphic that is appropriate for the task at hand. By “chart junk”, I mean all the unnecessary frills that take up space but do not add to the informational content.

This tutorial will show you how to produce a bar chart with error bars. We desire a plot that shows the location of the average value along with bars that represent our certainty in that estimate. In science, we usually reserve a determination that something is “significant” if we are 95% certain of the value of a statistic. For example, if we measure two responses (e.g., muscle treated with ATP and muscle treated with ATP+salt, and we are 95% certain the mean of one response is between 20 and 40% change and we are 95% that the mean of the other response falls between 5 and 10%, then we can reason that we are at least 95% certain that the means of the two populations do not overlap. We call this a “significant difference”. There are more sophisticated ways to get at the statistical significance of something, but you will have to wait until your statistics courses to learn those. Besides calculating 95% confidence intervals gives the same information and is in most cases easier to understand.

You may have been told at some point that if you plot the standard error bars and they do not overlap that the two populations are different. Technically, this is not true and you should forget about it. The standard error represents approximately an approximate 68% confidence interval, which is far less than traditional readers will accept. To say that we are 68% certain that the mean value of two populations do not overlap would not be enough evidence to suggest that the difference we are seeing is just due to sampling error. We would say there was a difference in the mean but it was not “significant”. Most scientists would conclude that two populations are the same if they could not be more confident than 68%. It is not so difficult to change the 68% into a 95% confidence interval thanks to some statistical theory. We can approximate the 95% confidence interval by multiplying the standard error by two. You will learn why this works when you get to your statistics course. For now, just trust that it does.

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3.1. Summarize Data. To generate a bar chart the first step is to arrange your data to easily reference it when building your graphic. You will need a column for the treatment(s) names, a column for the mean value, a column for the standard error, and finally a column for the approximate 95% confidence interval.

Calculate Approximate 95% Confidence Interval. Use the standard error to calculate the approximate 95% confidence interval. We have already calculated the mean and standard error. To generate an approximately confidence interval, select the cell you want to calculate the 95% confidence interval in and type =CR*2 where C is the column and R is the row where the SE is stored. The asterisk is used in Excel to denote multiplication. You are telling Excel to multiply the standard error by two.

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3.2. Generate A Blank Chart Template. Select the Insert tab from the toolbar. Click on the chart type you want to create. In this example, we are going to generate a Column chart (which is another name for a bar chart). Select the first picture under the 2-D Column box.

After you click this button, an empty box in the middle of the page will appear. With your mouse click anywhere on the empty box that was created. Notice that a new tool bar is activated called Chart Tools”. There are three tabs under Chart Tools named Design, Layout and Format. Now click outside of the empty box. The Chart Tools tab disappears. The point is that if you want to work on charts you have to make sure you have selected the chart before the Chart Tools tabs becomes activated.

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3.3. Adding Data to the Blank Template. Right click with your mouse button inside the blank box that was created and choose Select Data from the dialog box that appears.

Another dialog box will appear. There are boxes for inputs for three different kinds of data. In the Chart data range box you want to click the button off the side, and then highlight the mean values. This will build the bars. The Legend Entries (Series) is where you would enter a name for the type of treatment used. In most graphs, legends qualify as “junk”. Since we will delete the legend in the following step, do not put anything in here. It will default to call it “Series 1”. The Horizontal (Category) Axis Labels is where you will put the representative names for each of the bars you created.

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3.4. Adding Error Bars. Having built the basic structure of the graph, you are now ready to add in the error bars. Make sure the chart is selected and the Charts Tools is activated. Select the Layout tab and then click on the Error Bars button to activate a dropdown box. You want to select More Error Bar Options…

The following box will appear. Select Vertical Error Bars in the left window pane. Go to the bottom of the right window pane and select Custom:. Next, click on the Specify Value button.

Click on the box in the Positive Error Value area and highlight both values you calculated for the 95% confidence interval. Click on the Negative Error Value box and highlight the same values (confidence intervals are symmetrical so they will be the same). After clicking and highlighting you should have a standard bar chart with error bars that represent the 95% confidence interval. Now we can start getting rid of junk.

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3.5. Deleting Grid Lines and Legends. To get rid of grid lines use your mouse to click on one of the horizontal grid lines in the chart. That should make all the grid lines be selected. To get rid of them just hit your Delete key. Likewise, to get rid of the legend, select it with your mouse and click Delete.

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3.6.Formatting Bars: Getting rid of color and adding a black border. Color should be used only when you are presenting on a color media, such as making a poster or slides for an oral presentation. For print purposes, such as you turn in for your report, you figures will look the best if there is no color. The default way the bars are drawn are with a solid fill of blue and no border. First, to add a black border, use your mouse to click inside one of the bars, which should highlight both bars. Right click with your mouse, and choose Format Data Series…. A dialog box will appear. Choose Fill in the left window pane and choose the option No fill. Now go back to the left window pane and choose “Border Color” in the left window pane. Choose Solid Line under Border Color. Go down to the color palette and choose the black square and click the Close button.

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3.7. Adding Labels on the y-axis. In bar charts you do not need a label for the x-axis because you have already labeled the two levels for the treatment; however, we have no idea what the values from 0 – 50 represent so we do need to add a label here. Again, select the chart, which will activate the Chart Tools tab. Go to the Layout tab and choose Axis Titles Primary Vertical Axis Title Rotated Title

After you click on this it will add a label placement along the y-axis. Type in your title which will appear in the function window. You can change the title latter if you simply click on the label again.

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3.8.Move Chart for Final Details. As the chart appears, it is embedded within the spreadsheet. We would like to move this so that the chart is an entire sheet by itself to make the final touches to it prior to importing it into Microsoft Word. Make sure the chart is selected to activate the Chart Tools tab. On the far right of the toolbar there is a button that says Move Chart. Click on it and select the option New sheet.

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3.9. Font Size and Type. Now that the chart is in its own sheet space you will be able to change the font type and size. Go up to the font box and change from Calibri 11 to Ariel 24.

3.10.Internal Lines. We want the internal lines to be black. Use your mouse cursor to select the x-axis line. Go to the Chart Tools and choose Format. Click the Shape Outline selection to get a dropdown box. From here pick the black color and then click outside the box to finish. Do the same thing for the y-axis.

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3.11. Copy and paste the final version into Microsoft Word. When your chart is as you want it to be, click the Copy button on the toolbar.

Switch to Microsoft Word, and click Paste in the upper left corner of the page, and from the dropdown box choose Paste Special….

Your graph should not be in Microsoft Word 2007.

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Chapter 4

“Fluff”: Getting Rid of Extra Words Writing in the sciences is a little different than other kinds of writings. We want to

develop the ability to use as few words as possible to convey our message. I refer to extra words that add no real meaning to the content as “fluff”. Sometimes students are under the mistaken perception that good reports are those with many words. That is not true. You will not be rewarded for using a lot of words; in fact, you will be penalized. I would prefer well thought, short reports to long verbose ones anytime.

The following list of “fluffy” words and how they can be replaced is from the very excellent book How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper by Robert Day. Likely you will not use all of the fluff in this list, but you will have some favorites (I do…my absolute favorite is “…with respect to…”). Identify your favorite fluff phrases and learn to replace them with fewer words.

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