Everyday Scientist

four data points is not enough

May 15, 2006 at 5:44 pm | sam | crazy figure contest, literature

Here’s another one for the worst-figure contest:

This is from a paper on curved diffusion in Phys. Rev. E. The four data point are culled from other publications, because the paper mostly reports the results of some (helpful) theoretical calculations. But do those four measly data points help? Especially with those error bar, I have no idea how well the theory actually fits the data. In the text, the author tries to claim that the solid line fits the circle data. Riiiight.