Tables and figures are an efficient way of presenting findings from a study. If they are designed well, they provide more information than an author could possibly put into words. A paper's key findings should be presented in tables and figures, as readers will look at them to get an overview of the study results. Importantly, they must be self-explanatory; a reader should be able to fully understand the information without having to read the text. Most journals allow only a limited number of tables and figures to be part of the print version of a paper (often around 5–6).
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Kotz et al. (2013) studied this question.