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Table (format)

Arrangement of information or data, typically in rows and columns

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A table cell is one grouping within a chart table used for storing information or data. Cells are grouped horizontally (rows of cells) and vertically (columns of cells). Each cell contains information relating to the combination of the row and column headings it is collinear with.

Basic description

A table consists of an ordered arrangement of rows and columns. This is a simplified description of the most basic kind of table. Certain considerations follow from this simplified description:

  • the term row has several common synonyms (e.g., record, k-tuple, n-tuple, vector);
  • the term column has several common synonyms (e.g., field, parameter, property, attribute, stanchion);
  • a column is usually identified by a name;
  • a column name can consist of a word, phrase or a numerical index;
  • the intersection of a row and a column is called a cell.

The elements of a table may be grouped, segmented, or arranged in many different ways, and even nested recursively. Additionally, a table may include metadata, annotations, a header, a footer or other ancillary features.

Simple table

The following illustrates a simple table with four columns and nine rows. The first row is not counted, because it is only used to display the column names. This is called a "header row".

Multi-dimensional table

The concept of dimension is also a part of basic terminology. Any "simple" table can be represented as a "multi-dimensional" table by normalizing the data values into ordered hierarchies. A common example of such a table is a multiplication table.

In multi-dimensional tables, each cell in the body of the table (and the value of that cell) relates to the values at the beginnings of the column (i.e. the header), the row, and other structures in more complex tables. This is an injective relation: each combination of the values of the headers row (row 0, for lack of a better term) and the headers column (column 0 for lack of a better term) is related to a unique cell in the table:

  • Column 1 and row 1 will only correspond to cell (1,1);
  • Column 1 and row 2 will only correspond to cell (2,1) etc.

The first column often presents information dimension description by which the rest of the table is navigated. This column is called "stub column". Tables may contain three or multiple dimensions and can be classified by the number of dimensions. Multi-dimensional tables may have super-rows - rows that describe additional dimensions for the rows that are presented below that row and are usually grouped in a tree-like structure. This structure is typically visually presented with an appropriate number of white spaces in front of each stub's label.

In literature tables often present numerical values, cumulative statistics, categorical values, and at times parallel descriptions in form of text. They can condense large amount of information to a limited space and therefore they are popular in scientific literature in many fields of study.

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