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.
3 Replies
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.
