How to graph your results

You will have collected data in your project, things you measured. Judges like to see your collection of data in your lab book, but on your display board you have to summarize the data so it can be understood clearly. You do with with charts and graphs.

It is very important that charts and graphs have good labels on them. You may know what the lines or bars mean, but unless they are labelled, someone else, like a judge, will not know. Your project will receive a lower score if the charts and graphs are not easy to understand, no matter how much work you did to produce them.

For line and bar graphs, you will have a vertical (up and down) direction (called an axis) and a horizontal direction. Each should be labelled on the graph.

If you have more than one line on a graph, each should be labelled in some way (you can use different colors or word labels). If you have many bars on a graph, each should be labelled in some way.
You can’t show all your data, and you don’t have to. Learn what an “average” is. You should have run several trials during your experiment, because you don’t want to rely on only one measurement. If you have three or five or ten measurements of the same experiment, find the average result. Do that for each set of trials (different sets of trials mean you changed one thing and ran the experiment again), then make a number chart or a graph of the average results.