Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

Home › Representing Science in Words and Images ›

Reply to comment

jrlewis's picture

Scientific Figures

Submitted by jrlewis on Thu, 07/24/2008 - 8:06am.

I wonder how scientific figures fit into our discussion about using pictures and words to represent stories?  They are visual representations containing a combination of pictures and words.  Especially important to interpretation is the figure legend.  Figures and their legends are considered a more concise manner of conveying results than merely words. 

We expect students to interpret figures that we generate or present from the literature.  We try to teach students how to create clear and concise figures for summarizing data and lab reports.

Figures require interpretation by the audience/reader of the article.  However, I am not sure where they fall in terms of the observation/story spectrum.  Figures might be a lower level analysis of the results to be used in a higher level or meta-analysis of the results.    

Reply

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
To prevent automated spam submissions leave this field empty.
15 + 0 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.

Remote Ready Biology Learning Activities

Scanning electron microscope image of SARS-CoV-2

Remote Ready Biology Learning Activities has 50 remote-ready activities, which work for either your classroom or remote teaching.

Narrative is determined not by a desire to narrate but by a desire to exchange. (Roland Barthes, S/Z)

What's New? Subscribe to Serendip Studio