Table (information)

A table is an ordered compilation of text or data. The displayed contents are employed in rows ( horizontal) and column (vertical) split, which are graphically aligned. The first column in the table below is called first column, the first row header. Furthermore, there are tables of table fields ( cells). The reference to a field is the address (reference)

Mostly, there is a semantic relationship between the contents of a cell and row or column in which it is located.

Known tables are, for example, the Düsseldorf table and the periodic table.

Table of endangered species

Data table

Schedule table

Saturn oppositions

HTML table

Data Tables

Construction

The goal of the tables is to provide detailed information in a short and concise. In order to extract the relevant information from tables, an appropriate structure or design is necessary. Therefore, some rules for readability should be considered:

1 tables should contain explanatory text in an over-or signature.

Table 2 over-or signatures should include in documents with several tables its own numbering. 3 Then you can clearly refer to a specific table in the accompanying text. 4 A table should also be described in the accompanying text.

5 A table should not contain too many columns and rows

6 rows and columns should be sorted in natural order, by size.

7 It should be no repeat signs, such as " ditto " to use.

8 tables should not contain unrelated information.

9 The layout should " lead " the eye:

• Avoid vertical lines
• Avoid double lines
• To assist the readability it is better to use background colors instead of a line " network "

10 units, you should write to the head of each column.

11 for column and row sums (or averages) should be specified if possible / necessary.

12 values ​​to be compared should better be in different columns, not in separate rows.

13 texts should be set flush left.

14 For numbers:

• Large numbers should be set up as possible
• They should be set flush right
• They should be rounded to two or three significant figures
• They should contain leading zeros, ie " 0.1 " instead of " 1"
• The decimal point for numbers in a column should always stand together.

Visualization

With a heat map

There are different ways to display tables with numerical values ​​graphically. One possibility is to replace the entries numerical symbols or colors.

Figure 1 shows the frequencies in Table 1 have been replaced by rectangles with corresponding grayscale. The darker a rectangle, the more times the corresponding feature combination occurred at the 592 statistics students. The combination of brown hair and eyes is so occurred most frequently, the combinations green eyes and black hair and brown eyes and blonde hair on the rarest.

With a Mosaikplot

As Table 1 and 2 represent absolute or conditional frequencies, they can also be represented in a so-called Mosaikplot. The height of each rectangle is determined by the relative proportion of the corresponding hair color. For hair color Brown thus results, ie, the rectangles in the first row have a height of about 48 % of the total height of the graphic. The width of the rectangles is obtained from the conditional frequencies in Table 2, the rectangle for brown hair and brown eyes and thus has a width of 42 % of the total width of the graphic. The proportions of the face for a combination of features in the total area corresponds exactly to share this combination of features. The area for the brown rectangle represents therefore, that about a fifth of the total.