Authoring a PhD Thesis How to Plan, Draft, Write and Finish a Doctoral Dissertation by Patrick Dunleavy

space (perhaps because they were transferred in that form from a spreadsheet), which gives the row numbers an uneven appear- anc ...

more difficult to handle very large numbers (above 1000), and very small numbers (such as smaller fractions of 1, like 0.0032 or ...

The principles here can easily be extended to any kind of data numbers. Express very large figures in units of hundreds of milli ...

time, though, this strategy helps the author, who is very famil- iar with the data’s complexities, but actually only confuses re ...

because it is distorted by the top two scores. The table’s notes give the range (the variation between the highest and lowest sc ...

most important principles are: ◆ Always have completely informative headings and labelling, including full details of units or m ...

would have to provide a series of different charts for each column of numbers being covered. You want to both present some prim ...

HANDLING ATTENTION POINTS◆ 173 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 Index of potato production (1997 = 100)^1997 100 110 120 121 (^135140 ...

174 ◆AUTHORING A PHD 01020 Respondents nominating issue in top three issues (%) 30 40 50 60 57 55 37 21 12 6 Economy/ unemployme ...

HANDLING ATTENTION POINTS◆ 175 Equity release from mortgage 7% Other 5% Loans 16% Credit card 45% Bank overdraft 27% (c) Pie cha ...

176 ◆AUTHORING A PHD 0% 20% 40% Percent using each means for purchases Credit card Bank card Cash Other 60% 80% 100% Germany 21 ...

HANDLING ATTENTION POINTS◆ 177 1994 Personal digital assistants (PDAs) Personal computers Mobile phones Number of appliances bou ...

178 ◆AUTHORING A PHD 60 Respondents saying government is doing a good job (%) 50 40 30 20 10 JJFMAM JASOND Month of the year Smo ...

HANDLING ATTENTION POINTS◆ 179 60 50 40 30 20 10 JFMAMJ Month Percentage % ‘Very good’ % ‘Fairly good’ JASOND 0 (g) Layer chart ...

180 ◆AUTHORING A PHD 50 45 40 Customer satisfaction (%) 35 30 25 20 15 10 02 46 Flights delayed (%) 8101214 5 0 (h) Scatterplot ...

HANDLING ATTENTION POINTS◆ 181 names on the horizontal axis, and so a separate key is needed to show which number denotes which ...

182 ◆AUTHORING A PHD variations of most of the other scores. Try to use zero wherever feasible as the scale starting-point for a ...

HANDLING ATTENTION POINTS◆ 183 but it will sometimes obscure blocs of data where several indices are shown together, unless they ...

184 ◆AUTHORING A PHD ◆ Use the ‘need to know’ criterion to pick an appropriate level for numbers, so that the chart can be easil ...

HANDLING ATTENTION POINTS◆ 185 Other techniques for data reduction The only way to grasp a mathematical concept is to see it in ...