Paper Data Figure

Paper data figure

The sibling skill draws what has no data behind it. This one draws what does, and the whole difference in outcome comes from two habits: the numbers are read from the files the experiments wrote, and the figure is drawn at the size it will be printed at.

Hard rules

1. Draw at final print size; \includegraphics never scales. Set figsize to the true width in inches and include the file with no width= at all. width=0.48\textwidth on a figure drawn at default size is how an 8 pt label silently becomes 5 pt, and nothing in the compiled PDF announces it.
2. A LaTeX point is 1/72.27 inch; a PostScript point is 1/72 inch. \the\textwidth reports LaTeX points. Convert through inches. Treating the two as the same number puts a CVPR full-width figure 0.4 % over the text width, which is enough for Overfull \hbox. Measure the venue once, in the document body: \typeout{\the\textwidth, \the\columnwidth}.
3. Numbers come from the result files, never from a message or a memory. Read the JSONL, CSV or summary the run produced. A figure that hardcodes a number is a figure that will disagree with its own table after the next run.
4. Never plot an arm that has not run. An empty series is left out and said so in the caption; it is not interpolated, extrapolated, or filled with a plausible value.
5. One script per figure, one shared style module, imported not copied. scripts/paper_plot_style.py holds the geometry, the type ramp and the palette. A figure script that sets its own rcParams has left the system and will drift.
6. Every series separable three ways: hue, dash and marker. Hue alone dies in greyscale and for a colour-deficient reader. The paper's own row is the same hue family, one weight heavier — never a different palette.
7. No title inside the figure. The caption is the title, and it lives in LaTeX. Same for the panel letters when the venue sets them.
8. Render, then look. Read the produced PNG back and inspect it before declaring done. A script that exits 0 has proved nothing about clipped labels or a legend over the data.

Workflow

Step 0 — Find the numbers and name the claim. Locate the result files. State, in one sentence, what the figure is for: the claim a reader should be able to check off it. A figure without that sentence becomes a decorative plot of everything that was measured.

Step 1 — Clarify the specification. Figure type, what maps to x, y, hue and panel, which width (column or full), what is on a log axis, which series is ours. references/figure-types.md gives the type-to-use-case table and the default aspect per type.

Step 2 — Generate and execute, at most four times. Write a self-contained script under figures/gen_<id>.py that imports the style module, reads the result file, and calls save(). Run it. On a traceback, read it, fix the script, run again. Stop at four attempts and report what blocked rather than degrading the figure to make it run.

Step 3 — Read the render back. Open the PNG twin and check, in this order: is it the figure type intended; does every axis carry a label and a unit; is any label clipped; does the legend sit on data; are the tick labels legible at print size; is the hue order the same as every other figure in the paper. Fix and re-run. This step is not optional — it is the only one that catches what the script cannot.

Step 4 — Emit the LaTeX. Append to figures/latex_includes.tex a block per figure with \includegraphics{...} carrying no width, a \label, and a caption stub the author replaces.

Step 5 — Checklist. Run the partitioned checklist below, then audit() from the style module for the page-fit and rasterised-type checks.

Checklist, partitioned

The partition matters: the first list is never negotiable, the second is a set of strong defaults that a specific figure may justify overriding.

Correctness — always binding

• Excluded runs never feed a summary statistic plotted beside included ones.
• The caption is tested against every plotted series; a claim like "best on five of seven tasks" is counted off the figure, not remembered.
• Only comparable conditions share an axis. A different budget, protocol or test-set size is a separate panel or an annotation, never a silent neighbour.
• n and the replication unit appear in the panel or the caption.
• Rendered and looked at: no clipped label, nothing unreadable at print size.

Guidance — strong defaults

• Serif face matching the paper body; base 8 pt, floor 6 pt.
• Greyscale-distinguishable, colourblind-safe.
• Axis labels carry units. Log axes are labelled as such.
• Legend outside the data, or in the emptiest quadrant.
• Vector PDF ships; PNG is the preview twin only.
• No grid unless the reader must read values off the plot; then a hairline grid under the data.

What this skill does not do

Framework, pipeline and architecture diagrams, sample grids, and any figure whose content is images rather than numbers. Those go to academic-figure-figma, which draws them at print size in Figma through the Plugin API. The two skills share one geometry table and one type ramp, so a paper's plotted figures and its drawn figures land at the same widths and the same label sizes.