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Lesson 23: Reading Simple Bar Graphs
It's important to know how to interpret the data in bar graphs. In the lesson we'll look at some simple ones, and later you'll work with more complex ones.
Don't forget to watch the embedded video clip for this lesson at the bottom of the page. Please be sure to read the embedded video information and disclaimer.
Look at the chart below. First, notice that bar charts are usually titled at the top, to tell you what they are about. This chart has something to do with student progress, but we'll have to look at the chart to learn more details.
Look at the labels at left and at the bottom. We can see that this chart shows us information about four students. It shows how many gold stars each student earned this week. The chart will allow us to visually compare how the students did.
Note that the numbers along the left count by ones. This won't always be the case, but it is for this particular chart. To see how many starts a student earned, all we have to is look at the bar for that student, and see how high it reaches. We then look to the left, and see what number it corresponds to. That's all there is to do.
Look at the chart below. The chart shows us the monthly reading progress of a student named Steve. Looking at the numbers on the left, we can see that each line in the chart represents two, and not one. Sometimes this is the case, so you have to look at the chart carefully to see how it is representing the data. We can also see that this particular chart tracks the number of books each month, for four different months.
Just as above, we can look at the bar for a particular month, and see how high the bar reaches, and then look across to the left to see what number it represents. We have to be careful, though, since we're counting by twos. If you look at the bar for October, you can see that it is between the 8 and the 10 lines. Since it is halfway between them, that means that it represents 9 books. Later you'll work with more complex bar charts.
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