How tochange decimal data into negative in realtime results?
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The relevance of biological effects is typically on a relational scale, that is graphically best represented as logarithms.
Example: a two-fold up regulation should be assumed to be biologically as relevant as a 2-fold down regulation. Plotting the folds in a barchart will produce a bar of length 0.5 for the down regulation and a bar of length 2 for the up regulation. The ratio of the bar areas what is percepted by the reader's eye and brain indicates that there is a huge, important up up regulation, whereas the down regulation is relatively negligible. Even if a more appropriate dot-plot (or box plot or something like this) is used (with the reference line at y=1), the up regulation still looks much more strong and important than the down regulation. However, on the log-scale both effect look similar, only with different signs (to opposite directions; the reference line is now at y=0 -> log(1)=0).
Example: a two-fold up regulation should be assumed to be biologically as relevant as a 2-fold down regulation. Plotting the folds in a barchart will produce a bar of length 0.5 for the down regulation and a bar of length 2 for the up regulation. The ratio of the bar areas what is percepted by the reader's eye and brain indicates that there is a huge, important up up regulation, whereas the down regulation is relatively negligible. Even if a more appropriate dot-plot (or box plot or something like this) is used (with the reference line at y=1), the up regulation still looks much more strong and important than the down regulation. However, on the log-scale both effect look similar, only with different signs (to opposite directions; the reference line is now at y=0 -> log(1)=0).
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