Teaching mathematics
Bar charts
Bar charts are used to represent categorical data, such as favourite colours, and discrete numerical data, such as the number of children in a group of families.
In a bar chart the height of each bar represents the frequency corresponding to each category (Figure 18).
Figure 18 A bar chart
Activity 12 Reading data from a bar chart
Allow 5 minutes
- How many people prefer sci-fi films?
- How many people like comedy and romance films?
- How many people were asked in this survey?
Discussion
- Two people prefer sci-fi films.
- There are 21 (10 + 11) people who like comedy and romance films.
- A total of 36 people were asked (the sum of the frequencies).
OpenLearn - Teaching mathematics
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