As a nurse in a hospital, your observe that certain kinds of pain may be allievated by mere offering of a drug, potent or not. To test this hypothesis, two pain drugs and placebo randomly adminstered to patients following surgery. Time is recorded in hours until patient complains of pain.

What kind of graph would you use to summarize the results?

I'm having difficulty deciding what to use. I initally thought a bar graph but after trying it out. I can't decide if that's the right choice. Can someone help me out?

Try a bar graph with type of medication on the y axis and time in hours on the x axis. Your bars will be horizontal.

Thank you! I think I was just hesitant with the bar graph because veritcally it looked too crowded with five patients for each drug but horizontally not as big of an issue.

To summarize the results of the experiment, you can use a graph called a cumulative distribution plot or a Kaplan-Meier plot. This type of graph displays the cumulative probability of patients remaining pain-free over time.

Here's how you can create a cumulative distribution plot:

1. Start by organizing your data. Create a data table with four columns: drug type (Potent Drug, Non-potent Drug, Placebo), time (hours until patient complains of pain), number of patients remaining pain-free at each time point, and cumulative percentage of patients remaining pain-free.

2. Sort your data according to the time column in ascending order.

3. Calculate the number of patients remaining pain-free at each time point. For example, if you have three patients and their times until pain are 2 hours, 4 hours, and 6 hours, respectively, then at 2 hours, 3 patients are pain-free, at 4 hours, 2 patients are pain-free, and at 6 hours, 1 patient is pain-free.

4. Calculate the cumulative percentage of patients remaining pain-free at each time point. This can be done by dividing the number of patients remaining pain-free by the total number of patients and multiplying by 100.

5. Plot your data on a graph with time on the x-axis and cumulative percentage of patients remaining pain-free on the y-axis. You can use a line plot to connect the data points.

6. Label your axes and provide a clear title for the graph.

By creating a cumulative distribution plot, you can visually compare the pain relief effectiveness of the potent drug, non-potent drug, and placebo over time. The steeper the slope of the graph, the faster patients are experiencing pain.