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Making Simple Data Tables

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so this video we're going to look at how to organize data into simple tables and the most important thing about producing any datatable is to make sure that you plan in advance instead of just making the lines starting to throw numbers in and headings and labels in you ever think about an advance how you want to organize this data table when it's a simple table or a complex table so for the purposes of this video when do you use this data that I collected on so at some information about different sizes for T-Rexes have 5 sample a b or specimen ABCD any and I want to organize that into a simple datatable normally on she does some sheet of paper or maybe on a piece of scratch paper I would try to organize to think about what are the labels going to look like what units do I need to use how big does the table how wide should I make the columns for the purpose of this video though I'm going to go ahead and do that directly onto the a paper but normally I would make the the practice or the sketch on a separate sheet of paper so looking at the data I have for each of the T-Rex I have one specimen name the weather at male or female the height length the estimated weight and the last thing is the longest two so it's six things that I need to get into the state of table for six pieces of information including the the name of the specimen so I'm going to go ahead and start writing some of the information that I need up here so first there's going to be a specimen I know that there's going to be the of the of the animal is going to be the height there's going to be the length does win to be the estimated wait and lastly there's going to be the longest tooth so there's about 6 pieces of information also I'm going to have units for some of these numbers for example the first two specimens X those have no units but the height that does have units so I'm going to need to somehow get in there that this measurement is in meters I know that the length is in meters I know the estimated weight is in metric tons and the longest tooth is in centimeters so it's really important to write all of the information that will ultimately end up in your heading labels at the top so you can see how big you need to make this thing how many boxes do you need to designate for these labels at the top how wide should they be no wonder things are really want to stress for making these data tables is that they should be very clear they should not be repetitive so another words if you look at the original data set how many times the unit meter shows up one two three four five six seven eight nine 10 times it shows up metric tons shows up 5 times centimeter shows up 5 times but in my day. how to reduce that down by only putting the units a single time at the top and we're basically taking advantage of a mathematical property called the distributive property in that everything that falls under that Colin will have those same units and will always represent for example the length of the animal so we want to make the table very concise and not be so repetitive with the information connected to the numbers we want to keep the numbers just by themselves so they're nice and clean easy to see an easy to compare with the other Alliance it will see you in the datatable so for myself looking at especially this one over here on the right so it looks like the one that's going to take the most space so when I'm probably going to do is make one two three four blocks high so my head and goes across is going to be 4 blocks high that's going to make sure that I can fit all of these but then also fit in my longest or my most information that I have which is the estimated weight okay then the next thing I want to try and figure out is after I make the headingley the top how far down am I going to go so in this case there are going to be five Rose after the heading of the top one for each of the five letters representing the the five different dinosaurs the information is going to go in those is only going to be is like for example the letter A the number 4.1 the length of the 230 centimeters so those boxes probably don't need to be quite so big I probably could get away with making them only probably two boxes High plenty of room for me to be able to fit all of the the data the last thing that I need to think about is since I have 6 pieces of information I need to think about how wide will each column be one of the things in making a very professional table is you want to try to make sure that you are euros are all the same width or height I should say and that your columns are all the same width so for myself I would count the number of blocks just to try and figure out how much space I have to work with so starting from here to four as list on over here 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 two four six eight so I have 30 blocks to work with going across so I can make a couple of choices I have 6 so I can make each of the blocks for blocks wide or blocks is about that wide that probably will fit I can make it fit but I'm going to make a datatable a little bit wider I know that it's going to fit because I know how many I I have six columns and I know that if I make them five blocks wide that would be 30 bucks total and I'll definitely be able to make it so what I'm going to do right now is I'm going to go ahead and start laying out the outline of the data table start over here on the left hand side to make a very faint. On my first square and then my account back again to find out where that 30th Square was 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 1822 4 6 8 30 is right there special now I'll go ahead and create that first line This is give me the top line of my data table and what day is really important to make sure that I always use a ruler for making the lines hey so when I make my line I don't guess how far it's going to be is that going to dangling off the end of my car stopped short and it have to add more to line I know I've met this thing wide enough in order to be able to fit all of the data so I said that I was going to make the top heading a little bit bigger so I can accommodate all the information I need to and that's going to be 4 lines 1 2 3 4 so that's this line the trick is now I don't even count anymore I have the first line put in and I'm going to make every single one of my lines exactly the same length as this one every Lions going to stop exactly at the right place so this is where my heading will go and now I'm going to start making the rose for each of the entries so if years were the information for T-Rex say T-Rex be orexi please list the bottom of my table so when I make my vertical lines I won't be guessing where those vertical lines are going to Aunt I know where they're going down this is the bottom line for the table and no line will need to extend beyond this point okay so there's my rose I said I would think I'm two blocks high I have dinosaur ABCD any I have my roof my headings now only way to do is my turn this just a little bit so that I can stop putting in my vertical lines so that I would make sure blocks 5 wide so 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 and the last one one two three 457 worked out perfect I'm going to cap off all these lines okay so when you go to the data table now I don't have lines dangling off the right side or find me. I mean do a raised I don't need to extend any of the lines all I did was just count a couple of times to make sure how long each of the sides and eats the links would be and then from there I just continue the lines I only had to count this one I had to count to box going down very easy to do and then going across I just had to count every five it just takes a few seconds and table looks so much better so much more professional cleaner and meter and now again normally these will be on a separate sheet of paper now I'll just transfer all that Malaysian I know where everything is going to be so the last point that I want to make about the data table if you want to try to send her everything both left to right within each cell and top to bottom within each cell so they write the word specimen for example at 4 I'm going to put it right in the middle of the the middle two blocks same thing with this word since this is a pretty small world I'll start closer to the middle for height I'm going to go the block so that's going to be tight and that will be in units of meters I would do the same thing for life that's also in meters now I have asked me to what is the longest one and lastly the longest to snow this is three words so much started close to the top so everything is roughly centered left to right and then also top to the bottom so now all is left to do is to take the day today start transferring the information in this won't take but about a minute or so for me to get all the information in there again imma try and put everything in the center both left right and top to bottom so for this one we had two females then there were two males and lastly do female so I'm just going right down the list next is height so I have 4.1 .9 again I'm going to try and send you this as best as I can one thing I'm not going to do though is I'm not going to put the units so the units are here at the top it's a distributive property today apply to everything in the column below them so there's no reason to put anything except for the numbers then go to the length the weight and lastly the longest tooth and we're done just a very well may table spray clear it's easy for me to compare the each of the individual example length to compare how the length I can see things like for example that the mail T-Rex is generally a little bit shorter than the females also a little bit shorter and less a shooter might also smaller typically and wait things like this start to jump out where is the original data which has all the same information but is very repetitive and very difficult to make comparisons much cleaner now that it's in a nice concise datatable I pulled all the units up to the top now I can compare the numbers in the day up a little bit more easily so again the key to making these very professional-looking tables is to just take a moment to plan in advance what will the top of this look like and use the graph paper to count out the number of blocks vertically and horizontally so did you just make that count one time and when you put the lines down you know that those lines are exactly the way they need to be

Uploaded by Shane Crone.

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Making Simple Data Tables

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