Constructed Climates

Essential Graphical Knowledge

Graphs provide tremendously important information to scientists, and in this
book I rely on them heavily. Graphs encapsulate so much information, providing
an easy look at broad patterns in scientific data. These subtle and broad patterns
of variations and trends usually remain completely hidden in tables of numbers.
Words and descriptions yield incomplete yet lengthy prose, prone to misinterpretation,
whereas graphs contain all of the information.

In this Appendix I point out important visual messages that graphs display,
messages that only graphs can reveal concisely, messages that help people understand
more deeply phenomena surrounding urban trees.