The goal of this chapter is to help you understand how optimally to present data. The chapter draws heavily on three sources to which we refer readers for more details. For the presentation of data in the form of tables, Andrew Ehrenberg's Data Reduction and A Primer in Data Reduction (1978, 1982) contain much good sound advice. For the use of figures, William Cleveland's The Elements of Graphing Data (1994) is a style guide that is required reading for anyone considering using a graph, from the most junior undergraduate to the most experienced researcher. Good advice is also available in the works of Tufte (2001) and Wainer (1984) as well as in the sixth edition of the APA Manual (American Psychological Association, 2009).

Tables and figures allow large amounts of material to be presented concisely. Well presented, they often enable readers to understand at a glance patterns of data and exceptions that would be obscured if presented in the text. Tables and figures are more expensive for journals to produce than text, however, so if you plan to submit a paper for publication, you should present in this form only your most important sets of data. Do not duplicate data from one table or figure to another unless it is essential for comprehension. Extensive sets of data should be reported in appendices rather than in the body of the paper, or should be made available online with an appropriate note in the paper indicating the Web address at which the data can be obtained.