The reporting and graphing of ecological data and statistical results often leave a lot tobe desired. One reason can be a misunderstanding or confusion of some basic conceptsin statistics such as standard deviation, standard error, margin of error, confidenceinterval, skewness of distribution and correlation. The implications of having smallsample sizes are also often glossed over. In several situations, statistics and associatedgraphical representations are made for comparing groups of samples, where the issuesbecome even more complex. Here, I aim to clarify these basic concepts and ways ofreporting and visualizing summaries of variables in ecological research, both for singlevariables as well as pairs of variables. Specific recommendations about better practiceare made, for example describing precision of the mean by the margin of error andbootstrapping to obtain confidence intervals. The role of the logarithmic transformationof positive data is described, as well as its implications in the reporting of results inmultiplicative rather than additive form. Comments are also made about ordinationplots derived from multivariate analyses, such as principal component analysis andcanonical correspondence analysis, with suggested improvements. Some data sets fromthis Kongsfjord special issue are amongst those used as examples.