1.4 Tally charts and frequency charts

Tallying is a way of recording data in groups of five.

Recording frequencies in this way means totalling the number of tally marks made (figure 1).

Figure 1 Tally marks

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Tally marks: four vertical line marks and one diagonal line mark crossing the four marks

Figure 1 Tally marks

Tally charts can be used to collect and organise primary data.

Look at the tally chart in Figure 2.

Figure 2 A tally chart

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A tally chart showing the popularity of different biscuits. The fist column has the title “biscuits” and lists the following: digestive, jammy dodger, chocolate bourbon, custard cream, other. The second column shows tally marks for each of the biscuit types which match with the totals in the third column (in order): 5, 13, 4, 8, 2, matching with the biscuit types listed above

Figure 2 A tally chart

The first column contains all of the possible data options. Note that there is an ‘other’ box in case any of the answers do not fit into the first four categories. As with questionnaire questions, it is important that every possible answer can be recorded in a data collection table such as this one.

The second column is for a tally, so that results can be recorded and added to.The final column is the frequency. This is the total for each data category once all the data has been collected.

It is also possible to have a frequency chart without a tally column, like the example shown below.