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The Teaching Quantitative Skills in the Geosciences website has not been significantly updated since 2011. We are preserving the web pages here because they still contain useful ideas and content. But be aware that the site may have out of date information.
You can find more recent and extensive resources on the Teach the Earth website.

Describing and Analyzing Graphs

Initial Publication Date: December 21, 2006

South Pole Ozone Vertical Profile




An important part of data analysis is understanding the information contained within a graphical representation of data. To accomplish this, students must be given guidelines for describing and analyzing data presented graphically.

  • Asking students to view and describe graphs in their own words helps them better understand the information conveyed by a graph. Learn more here
  • The basics of plotting points, labeling axes with appropriate scales, titles, and units can be difficult for some introductory-level students. Learn more here
  • Frequency plots or histograms are a very useful visualization tool for univariate data. There are many resources available to help your students learn more about histograms. Learn more here
  • The linear trend or slope of a graph is often a useful value to estimate from a series of data. Learn more here
  • The Period, frequency, and amplitude are basic parameters that students can estimate from graphs of periodic data. Learn more here
  • The doubling time for exponential growth or the residence time for exponential decay are often worth exploring in introductory geoscience and bioscience courses courses. Learn more here
  • Contour Plots are extremely common throughout the geosciences. Contour plots are very useful for visualizing and interpreting large data collected on a two-dimensional grid network. Learn more here

  • Two dimensional times series are best visualized by Hovmoller plots in which the abscissa (x-axis) is the time and the ordinate (y-axis) is some spatial variable like latitude, height, or depth, and the measured quantity identified by isopleths or color contours. Learn more here

  • Fourier transforms of time series or spatial data are used throughout the sciences. Consider providing your introductory-level students with some familiarity of this essential analysis tool. Learn more here