Skills Data Science Guide for Behavioral Data Exhibits

Guide for Behavioral Data Exhibits

v20260724
jebo-tables-figures
This guide provides best practices for creating high-impact tables and figures (exhibits) for academic journals, especially in behavioral economics. It emphasizes visualizing the core behavioral comparison—such as treatment effects, dynamic changes over rounds, or underlying distributions—so the main finding is immediately visible before reading any text. Key practices include using confidence intervals over significance stars, ensuring grayscale readability, and providing self-contained captions.
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Overview

Tables & Figures (jebo-tables-figures)

When to trigger

  • Treatment differences are buried in a wall-of-coefficients regression table
  • A reader cannot see the behavioral effect without reading the surrounding paragraph
  • Experimental dynamics (learning over rounds, by-period contributions) are not visualized
  • The figure shows means but hides the distribution the behavioral story depends on
  • You are unsure whether significance markers belong in a JEBO exhibit

What a JEBO exhibit must do

The reader should see the behavioral comparison — treatment vs. control, by group or over time — before reading a word of text. JEBO's experimental core makes a few exhibit types load-bearing:

  • Treatment-comparison plot. Bar/dot plot of the outcome by treatment with confidence intervals; the headline contrast is the visual focus, not a footnote.
  • Dynamics plot. For repeated games / multi-round experiments, plot the outcome by period and treatment so learning, decay, or convergence is visible (the round-by-round graph is a JEBO signature).
  • Distribution plot. Where the mechanism is about heterogeneity (e.g., types, bimodality of contributions), show the full distribution (CDF, histogram, or beeswarm), not just the mean — a difference in means can hide a difference in shape.
  • Regression table. Used to support the figure, with the design-relevant comparison up top, clustered SEs, and pre-registered/primary specification flagged.

Exhibit decisions by what the result is about

The behavioral claim is about… Lead exhibit Common mistake
A level difference across treatments bar/dot plot with CIs a 6-column table where the contrast is row 4
Change over repeated interaction by-period line plot per treatment reporting only the pooled average
Heterogeneity / types distribution / CDF / beeswarm a single mean hiding bimodality
A predicted ordering of arms ordered plot matching the model's prediction unordered table that obscures the ranking
A structural/behavioral estimate parameter plot with CIs + fit overlay a table of parameters with no fit visualization

House-style and Elsevier mechanics

  • Confidence intervals over bare asterisks. Show SEs/CIs; let the reader judge. (Elsevier permits significance stars, but a behavioral comparison is far more persuasive shown as overlapping/non-overlapping intervals; reserve any asterisks for support tables, never as the sole evidence.)
  • Self-contained captions: a referee should understand the exhibit without the body text — define treatment, unit, sample, error-bar meaning, and n.
  • Figures legible in grayscale (Elsevier print) — use patterns/markers, not color alone.
  • Report n per cell and the unit of observation (subject vs. subject-period vs. session); cluster the inference accordingly.
  • Number tables/figures and place near first mention; high-resolution vector figures per Elsevier artwork specs (检索于 2026-06;以官网为准).

Execution bridge (StatsPAI / Stata MCP)

Generate exhibits from the fitted result, not by retyping numbers. Full map: execution-with-mcp. JEBO spans behavioral/experimental and applied micro; randomization inference for experiments, DiD/IV for observational claims.

  • Tables: etable (multi-model) or did_summary_to_latex straight from the result_id.
  • Figures: plot_from_result / enhanced_event_study_plot / event_study_table — axis units and the SE/clustering note baked in.
  • Every note names the estimator + clustering and states the magnitude in interpretable units.

See a full fitted-result → exhibit chain in the JF execution walkthrough.

Checklist

  • The headline behavioral comparison is visible in the lead figure before any prose
  • Repeated-interaction results have a by-period plot per treatment
  • Heterogeneity claims show the distribution, not only the mean
  • Confidence intervals shown; significance stars are not the only evidence
  • Captions are self-contained (treatment, unit, n, error-bar definition)
  • Figures readable in grayscale; n-per-cell and clustering level reported
  • Exhibit ordering matches the model's predicted ordering where one exists

Anti-patterns

  • The main treatment effect appearing only as a coefficient in a dense table
  • A bar of means concealing a bimodal contribution distribution
  • Asterisks doing all the persuasive work with no CIs
  • Color-only figures that collapse in grayscale print
  • Captions that require the body text to interpret
  • Reporting subject-period n as if it were independent subjects (wrong clustering)

Output format

【Lead exhibit】treatment-comparison / by-period dynamics / distribution / parameter plot
【What it shows at a glance】<the behavioral contrast>
【Inference shown】CIs / SEs (asterisks support-only)
【Unit + n per cell】<subject / subject-period / session>; clustering:
【Grayscale-safe + self-contained caption】[Y/N]
【Next step】jebo-writing-style
Info
Category Data Science
Name jebo-tables-figures
Version v20260724
Size 5.5KB
Updated At 2026-07-28
Language