Presenting Data: How to Communicate Your Message Effectively

Chapter 2Tables

Before considering issues surrounding the design of tables, remember a couple of other important principles which relate to how the users seek to understand the content of tables.

2.1 Position of totals in tables

The first is the position of totals in a table. If we consider the education of our users, we know a lot about the principles they were taught in school and how they take in information.

Let us start with a set of numbers that is to be added to a total as presented in a row:

If we did a poll in the street and asked people where they would put an equal sign and the total, 100 per cent would say on the right of the row of numbers. Why? Because that is what they were taught in school.

Similarly, if we had a set of numbers in a column as:

Again, if we asked people in the street where they would put the total of the numbers, 100 per cent would say a line should be drawn beneath the column of numbers and the total put below the line.

Most available statistical software presents totals to the left of rows and at the top of columns: why? Simply, I believe, because it is easier to program that way! Others have argued that such presentation puts the important information first but that ignores the fact that most would not look there for totals. Where totals ...