Revealing undergraduate biology students’ conception of variability and error bars within graphing
Fig 9
Frequencies for answer confidence for students answering about what data are represented by error bars depending on what graph they made (a), what year they were (b), and what their reported major was (c).
A chi-square test was performed and a single asterisk represents a frequency that was significantly lower than expected. Double asterisk represents a frequency that was significantly higher than expected. Bar (raw) is a bar graph created with raw data; N = 1071. Bar (ymean) is a bar graph with just means; N = 484. Bar (ymean + errorbars) is a bar graph with means and error bars; N = 391. Catscatter (raw) is a graph similar to graph 3; N = 205. Catscatter (ymean) is a graph with a dot representing the mean for each group; N = 73. Quantscatter is a traditional scatterplot with two numerical variables; N = 184.