How To Design A Chartgraph For A Science Fair Project

Charts are basically tools used to organize data and to visualize data trends. Science fair projects, like other research projects, utilize charts to help show other scientists what they found while conducting their research. When you enter a science fair you will be required to create a science fair project report and a display board. Both of these things will need a variety of charts. Your ability to design a quality chart for your project will impact the score or grade that your project earns.

Step #1 Organize Your Data Into a Spreadsheet

The first step in designing a chart for a science fair project is to organize the collected data into a spreadsheet. This process is important because the spreadsheet program will help you to quickly create a variety of charts from the same data set. To organize data in a spreadsheet you will need to create column and row headings.

Column headings will appear at the top of your spreadsheet. The first column heading will describe your row categories and the remaining column headings will relate to data collected. The row headings will describe what was being measured or who was being measured. Usually the row headings will relate to the X axis on a chart and the columns will relate to the Y axis on a chart.

Step #2 Determine that Type of Chart to Use

There are several different types of charts and graphs that you can create. The most popular ones for science fair projects are bar, line and pie charts. These create graphics that quickly show response differences from your experiments. The type of chart that you select is going to depend on the type of data that you are trying to depict. For example, a pie chart works well for demonstrating the parts of a whole system. A line graph, on the other hand, is better at illustrating changes in responses over time.

Step #3 Use Software to Create Graphs and Charts

After you have selected the type of chart that you want to create, your next step is to sue your spreadsheet software to create that chart or graph. Usually this will require that you highlight the data set and use data tools to produce a chart or graph. This process may also include the assigning of specific data groups to the X and Y axes.

Step #4 Customize Your Chart or Graph

The final step is to customize your chart of graph. This means that you will need to title your graph or chart. The title needs to explain what type of data is being depicted in the chart. It will also mean that you will need to create a legend for the chart. The legend will explain what symbols used in the chart mean and it will also expand any abbreviations that you used. Finally you will need to label your X and Y axes. For example, you may need to label dates on the X axis and population sizes on the Y axis.