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59 Vand. L. Rev. 1811 (2006)
On the Effective Communication of the Results of Empirical Studies, Part I

handle is hein.journals/vanlr59 and id is 1827 raw text is: On the Effective Communication of the Results of Empirical Studies, Part 1* Lee Epstein, Andrew D. Martin, & Matthew M. Schneider+ I IN TRODU CTION ................................................................... 1812 II. M OTIVATION ....................................................................... 1816 A. Developments in the Legal Academy ...................... 1816 B Developments Outside the Legal Academy ............. 1822 III. GENERAL PRINCIPLES FOR COMMUNICATING DATA AN D R ESU LTS ...................................................................... 1827 A. Communicate Substance, not Statistics ................. 1827 B. When Performing Inference, Convey Uncertainty ................................................. 1835 C. Graph Data and Results ......................................... 1838 IV. GENERAL PRINCIPLES FOR VISUALIZING DATA AN D R ESU LTS ..................................................................... 1845 A. Aim for Clarity and Impact .................................... 1847 1. Eliminate Distracting Elements ................. 1851 2. Trust Your Readers ..................................... 1861 B . Itera te ...................................................................... 186 4 C. Write Detailed Captions .......................................... 1868 V . C ON CLU SION ....................................................................... 1870 Prepared for presentation at the Vanderbilt Law Review's Symposium on Empirical Legal Scholarship, February 17, 2006. + Lee Epstein (http://epstein.law.northwestern.edu/) is the Beatrice Kuhn Professor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law; Andrew D. Martin (http://adm.wustl.edu/) is Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis; Matthew M. Schneider is a Ph.D. student at Washington University in St. Louis. We are grateful to the National Science Foundation for supporting our research and to Jessica Flanigan and Kate Jensen for their research assistance. We also thank Gary Klass for his helpful comments. We used Stata and R to conduct the analyses and to produce the graphs presented in this article. The project's web site (http://epstein.law.northwestern.edu/research/communicating.html) houses replication materials. Please send all correspondence to Lee Epstein. Email: lee- epstein@northwestern.edu. Post: Northwestern University School of Law, 357 E Chicago Ave, Chicago, IL, 60611-3069. 1811