In the previous post, I showed a graph that supposedly shows the benefit of an active learning approach in teaching.

From the viewpoint of clear vision, this graph has problems.  Let me list some of the problems I see.

• Generally, this graph has too much clutter.
• The plotting points have dots that are surrounded by circles, squares, and diamonds, with different shades.  I have a hard time distinguishing the points.
• There are six overlapping lines with different shading.  It is hard to understand the meaning of the lines although there are labels on the left.
• It is hard to read the labels on the left since they interact with the inward tic marks.
• The legend for the plotting points is inside the line which adds to the clutter.
• Hard to read the text label right above the x axis.
• I don’t understand the <> notation, but part of the problem is that I don’t read many physics papers.

How would I improve this display?

• I would remove much of the text from the figure window.
• I’d use simpler plotting points, perhaps using color or different plotting symbols to distinguish groups.
• The legend should go outside of the plot window.