Forum Discussion
Error bars basic question
Hello all. That seems a basic question but it is confusing me.
I submitted a paper to journal with chart. This chart represents the results of experimental work. The reviewer asked me to add error bars to the figure, and when I did , it seems to have no meaning since the results are not trials, the data is one column for x and one column for y. I'm I missing something I should process in excel before adding the error bars? I attached the chart and data.
x | y |
0 | 85 |
0.5 | 61 |
1 | 48 |
1.5 | 38 |
2 | 13 |
Sahar, yes, you may show errors as fixed value (same for each point); or as fixed per cent from each point value; or standards error (standard deviation divided by the square root of the sample size); or standard deviation on your series.
And if you have your own errors you may add two columns (for plus and minus) and show them as your custom error values.
Hi Sahar,
Please check this what are the options for error bars https://support.office.com/en-us/article/add-change-or-remove-error-bars-in-a-chart-e6d12c87-8533-4cd6-a3f5-864049a145f0
Hello Sergei
Thank you so much for the reply. I'm totally aware how to do these, I'm just having trouble apply it to my data. I have only one Y and one X value for each input so no error calculations. do I just assume I need to show error of fixed value, for example SD=0.5 and plot the error bars for it?
Sahar, yes, you may show errors as fixed value (same for each point); or as fixed per cent from each point value; or standards error (standard deviation divided by the square root of the sample size); or standard deviation on your series.
And if you have your own errors you may add two columns (for plus and minus) and show them as your custom error values.
