Title: Prepare Figures and Tables
Course: BTEC-2000-301-302-303-F21 > Section: InnovaBio® Project Presentation

At some point in your career as a scientist or biotechnician you will need to prepare a report of your data for your supervisor or team. Now that you have demonstrated competence in statistical analysis of your data, you want to organize the results in a clear, and concise manner.  Your employer or research team may have specific conventions for how the data should be represented.  If you are preparing a manuscript for publication, each journal has guidelines on size, shape, and file formats.  Some journals specify font and how captions should be written.  Please see the example journal guidelines for Cell, Nature, and Science.

“Cell (Journal) Guidelines for Preparing Figures and Tables (Links to an external site.)”

“Nature (Journal) Guidelines for preparing Tables and Figures (Links to an external site.)”

“Science Magazine Guidelines for  Preparing Figures and Tables (Links to an external site.)”

As you can see the journal guideline examples are fairly vague on how to present all the various types of data you will encounter, however, non-compliance will delay or prevent publication of your article.  In InnovaBio®, it is unlikely that we will be preparing manuscripts for journals, however, InnovaBio® does prepare reports to deliver results to contracted companies.  As much as possible we would like to include student work in the reports.  You will also present your project and data at the end of this Module. If you make the results figures and tables frequently it will be much easier to prepare the presentation.  If you reach a significant milestone on the project, we may ask you to present your work at the company.  The following instructional materials have many valuable suggestions for how to present various types of results.  The evaluation rubric in the Performance Assessment will specify how your figures and table will be evaluated.  Use the following resource documents as guidelines for preparing figures and tables. One important convention that is not always specifically stated is that pictures of PAGE and agarose gels should be oriented so the largest sizes are at the top of the figure.

“Almost Everything You Wanted to Know About Making Tables and Figures” - HTW_Guide_Table-Figures_9-30-08.pdf

“Ten Simple Rules for Better Figures” - Ten Simple Rules for Better Figures.pdf

"Creating Effective Scientific Figures for Publication" - Guide-Creating-Effective-Scientific-Figures-for-Publication.pdf

You can use the scanner in my office to capture digital images of your data. Make your figures in PowerPoint to easily integrate them into your presentation at the end of the module.  Tables can be copied from Excel into a PowerPoint slide.  Tables may need additional formatting when transferred to PowerPoint.

1. Review the resource documents provided and the rubric below.
2. Make figures and/or tables in PowerPoint according to the requirements in the rubric.
3. Submit at least three figures or tables to Canvas.