Definition of a Data Plot
A data plot is a graphical display of a collection of data points on a
coordinate plane. They are frequently used to help call attention
to a pattern which might not be immediately obvious to a person simply
reading the numbers in a table. This is especially helpful when the
data set is very large or the relationship is particularly subtle.
For example, you could decide to spend a school year getting up early
on every third day to record the time at which the sun came up. At
the end of that year, you would have a table
of nearly 100 data points representing the time the sun rose on the day
you made each observation. You could also make a plot of that data
showing the sun-rise time on the 'Y'-axis and the day of the observation
on the 'X'-axis.
Sun-Rise Time Versus Day Number
While it might not be easy to see any trend when you looked at the table,
the plot of this same data quickly reveals an important pattern.
