It has been a long long time since I did some statistics. Now, I am stuck behind my computer thinking about what I want to do with my data.
In fact, I know what I want, just not sure how to get it...
I want to know which plots in a fantasy land are the least fertile (or whatever analogy that does not disclose my true profession). I have two lands: land A, the control land, and land B, the experimental land. In land B there are 6 different plots.
I have many plants (so to say). Most of them have grown on multiple plots in the land (they are really big plants or something. Whatever, it is just an analogy, doesn't mean it has to be doable in the real world...).
I know that there is a difference between land A and land B, in the direction I expected. In general these two lands differ. Now I want to know what plots in land B are responsible for the difference in plant growth. I made a spss file in which I compare plants that were on a plot against those that were not in these plots (for instance "plot 3" compared to "control group").
I found two plots that differed significantly from controls.
Now, I want a nice way to present the data.
Do I make a table in which per plot the percentage of slow growing plants are presented? Do I measure this slow- growing in z-scores based on the control group?
What other elegant ways are there to show differences between controls and sub-sets?
(I know, many, I just want some food for thought, to get this dusty brain going again...)
to be honest, I don';t really know which plot would be best since I don't really get the experimental set up (I blame lack of coffee and an early hour).
ReplyDeleteI personally like 'box plots' or "ditribution plots with a mean line but you still see the individual samples" and then you have the various samples groups next to one another and the differences and similarities can be clearly visible.
Or the percentage comparison... although, sometimes that turns out to be comparing normalised values - which I am sort of allergic too (although at times it's a quick and easy way to show what you want to point out "70% plats over 1 m, compared to 10% over 1 m in the other plot" ... )
don't know if this helped to get the dust going? ;)