Presentation of Biological Data

One of the best means of presenting biological data is by the use of graphs.  Four types of graph are commonly used in biology and it is important to know which type of graph is most appropriate for a particular type of data.  The four main graph types are bar charts, histograms ( a special form of bar chart used to describe frequency distributions ), pie charts and scatter plots ( or line graphs ).

This exercise is aimed at ensuring you are familiar with the differences between these graph types.

In the following questions a particular data set will be described to you and you must choose which of the four graphs (A,B,C,D) is most appropriate for the presentation of this data.

1) The body masses of 500 male undergraduates.
One answer only.

   Bar Chart     Histogram     Pie Chart     Scatter Plot

2) The number of Biology undergraduates belonging to the different University Colleges.
One answer only.

   Bar Chart     Histogram     Pie Chart     Scatter Plot

3) The association between the number of cigarettes smoked per day and frequency of lung cancer in England.
One answer only. 
   Bar Chart     Histogram     Pie Chart     Scatter Plot

4) The relationship between air temperature and transpiration rate of plants.
One answer only.

   Bar Chart     Histogram     Pie Chart     Scatter Plot

5) The number of first class degrees in biology for each year between 1980 and 1990.
One answer only.

   Bar Chart     Histogram     Pie Chart     Scatter Plot

6) The proportion of seedling in a forest destroyed by fungus, herbivores, pathogens, trampling or wilting.
One answer only.

   Bar Chart     Histogram     Pie Chart     Scatter Plot


7) The average number of eggs laid by five varieties of chickens.
One answer only. 
   Bar Chart     Histogram     Pie Chart     Scatter Plot

8) The number of first, upper second, lower second, thirds, passes and fails in finals at Durham in 1993.
One answer only.

   Bar Chart     Histogram     Pie Chart     Scatter Plot

9) The number of orchids found in each of 500 1m2 plots on Holy Island(Lindisfarne).
One answer only.

   Bar Chart     Histogram     Pie Chart     Scatter Plot

10) The frequency of UK students belonging to Anglican, Catholic, Jewish, Islamic, Hindi and Buddhist faiths.
One answer only.
   Bar Chart     Histogram     Pie Chart     Scatter Plot


This test has been created using the CASTLE Toolkit