Bar graphs

Twenty students were asked: What are some of your after-school activities?

Examine the data in the bar graph titled "After-School Activities." What are the labels of the x-axis along the bottom and the y-axis along the side? How are the numbers increasing? How high is each bar in the graph?

In this Learning Activity, record your thoughts using a method of your choice.

What do you notice about the data? What information does it tell you?

Now examine the same data in the tally table below. What is the title for each column? How is the information shared?

Note how the tally marks are displayed. Each set is a group of five. Four of the marks are sticks, straight up and down. The fifth mark crosses the other four marks to complete the set.

How many after-school activities was each student allowed to choose? How do you know?

Task 1: Displaying data

In Minds On, we explored a set of data for a group of students asked about their after-school activities.

Another teacher in the school also collected data about after-school activities.

Here is the data:

Each student surveyed selected 2 after-school activities. How many students did the teacher collect data from?

Let’s create a tally table to collect the data. The tally table will have two columns. The first column will list the options in the survey. The second column is for the tally marks.

You can access the Tally Table here, or use your notebook or a voice recorder to keep tally the data.

Compare this data to the data in the Minds On section.

• What do you notice?
• What is similar between the two sets of data?
• What is different?

Record your thoughts using a method of your choice.

Task 2: Organizing data

A teacher is going to have an end of year celebration.

The class was asked: What types of snacks would you like to have at the celebration?

The teacher collected the data by age group. Here is the data collected:

Age 7: Chips, Fruit, Gulab Jamun, Fruit, Gulab Jamun, Chips, Other, Churros, Other, Churros, Churros

Age 8: Gulab Jamun, Fruit, Chips, Other, Churros, Other, Chips, Chips, Fruit, Other, Other, Other

Organize the data using a tally table. This tally table explores two different sets of data. In this case, it is divided into two different ages.

This kind of tally table is called a two-way tally table because it includes two sets of data to tally. The two sets are age and favourite snack.

You can access the printable and fillable Two-way Tally Table here, or use your notebook or a voice recorder to record your answers.

Reflect and record your thoughts using a method of your choice.

What did you discover after collecting the data?

Do you think this data would change if we asked a different age group? Why?

Would the data change if you surveyed only teachers? Why?

Moving data – Pictograph

Reflect back on the "After-School Activities" Tally Table created in Task 1. Let’s use that data to create a pictograph. A pictograph uses pictures or symbols to show how many things are in a category. Here’s an example:

This time instead of using tally marks, you will use a happy face to show each choice. Here is the data from "After-School Activities."

You can use the fillable and printable Pictograph document to record your answers, your notebook, or keep count using a voice recorder.

Reflect

Did the data change when we used happy faces? How do you know? Can you think of another graph you could use to show the same data?

Reflection

How do you feel about what you have learned in this activity?  Which of the next four sentences best matches how you are feeling about your learning? Press the button that is beside this sentence.

Now, record your ideas about your feelings using a voice recorder, speech-to-text, or writing tool.