Plotting a graph without stupid scales

Anarchy Rules!

So I measured the growth rate of bacteria over a few hours, then measured the density of bacteria the next day. Thing is, how do I plot the overnight on the same graph without ridiculous scales?

Captain Vash

If you're doing a bar graph, you could do

 6|
 5|
 4|
 3|
 2|
 1|
   ------------------------\/\/\-----------
   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11         72 73 74

ronya

Use different time units on each axis.

Lepton

Make the y-axis scale exponentially.

Movitz

Lepton wrote: »

Make the y-axis scale exponentially.

The time axis (X) is the problem, not the density. And I assume the Y is already on a log-scale because that is the most common way of presenting it.

Either do what Captain Vash suggested or just grade it as you want. Like 2, 4, 6, 10, 20, 60, 120.

And if it's just for an overnight culture, why not keep the x graded from 0 to 36 h with 1h increments? It makes it easy to see when you collected your data.

edit: Rereading your OP confuses me. I just assumed that you took OD at a couple of points during the day and then another OD the next day. If not, disregard whatever I wrote. If you measured actual growth rate (as in the derivative of the OD) and then took the OD the next day I don't know why you'd want to present that in one graph.

Dark Moon

Bacterial growth (or any exponential growth, really) is traditionally graphed on a logarithmic scale because of this very problem. You can even get logarithmic graphing paper if you'd like to do this by hand.