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Interview: Making the most of economics at university

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Development economics: Randomised control trials

QUANTITATIVE SKILLS

Reading graphical data

During your economics course, you will be asked to interpret data. Sometimes these data will be presented in the form of graphs. In this article, Peter Smith provides a guide to the main types of graph that you may meet and discusses how to make the most of using them

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There are several different ways of showing data in a visual form, which is often more helpful than just being presented with numbers. However, there is no one-size-fits-all in this context, because different types of data need to be displayed in different ways. You need to be ready to read and interpret these various forms of graph.

The line graph is especially common (and especially useful) in macroeconomics, when we need to examine the time-path of a variable through a period. This is particularly important when we want to monitor the performance of the economy, or to evaluate the impact of events on an economic variable.

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Interview: Making the most of economics at university

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Development economics: Randomised control trials

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