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Often I come across the following situation: I have some experimental evaluation of running times of a new algorithm. Printing the running times in a table is good. Adding a plotted diagram illustrates the results in a nice way. Unfortunately this brings redundancy in a publication and needs many space, because the runnings times are already listed in the table.

Which way is best practice?

  1. Only print a table (precise results, but no illustration)
  2. Only print a plotted diagram (none precise results, but illustration)
  3. Both (precise and illustration, but redundancy)
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    Are the times important in and of themselves ("wow, he got it in 2s") or scaling with some other parameter ("wow, it goes as ln N")? I would think the former would favor tables and the later favor plots.
    – zeldredge
    Commented Sep 1, 2015 at 2:38

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I'd go for the diagram, supplemented by a short table if need be. But be prepared to have a "full version" (with complete tables as appendices or so) as a technical report or otherwise available for anyone who wants to replicate your work (or use your data for comparison, or whatever).

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  • This is a perfect use for supplementary information in a journal publication.
    – jakebeal
    Commented Sep 5, 2015 at 12:06

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