Example 1:

Each bar represents a number of students who

received a bachelor’s degree in different major
areas. If twice as many people receive a degree
is business as in the social sciences, the business
bar will be twice as long as the social sciences
bar.

One way this could be different from a circle

graph is that there might be other disciplines
(foreign language, for example) that aren’t shown
on this graph.

(If you printed this out in black and white, you may
want to check out the color coding in the original
pdf.)

What is a circle graph?

When we’re keeping track of different categories of data, it can be useful to show how
much of the data is in what categories with a circle graph, too. It shows proportions, like a
bar graph, but in a slightly different way.

Example 2:
The entire circle represents ALL U.S. public school
students, so every student needs to belong in one
slice of the pie.

What is a dot plot?

A dot plot keeps track of frequency, or how often, different results show up. This is useful
when dealing with small amounts of quantitative (numerical) data.
Example 3:
Each dot represents
the population for one
of the 50 U.S. states.
Minnesota is in red.

When different states

have the same
population, the dot
stack up on top of
each other.
What is a stemplot?
A stemplot is a simple way to visually represent small amounts of quantitative (number)
data. This is sometimes called a stem and leaf plot because each piece of data is separated
into stem and leaf pieces.
student 6 4
Example 4: A B C D E F G H I J
This table shows student scores on a final exam.
Take the first digit in each two digit score, and score 7 0357
have it represent the stem. The second digit will 64 87 92 81 88 73 77 75 80 70
be the leaf. In this way, the graph will turn out a 8 0178
little like a dotplot.

9 2
What is a histogram?
A histogram is a visual display similar to a stemplot, but it can be used with large data sets.
A histogram has two dimension. One is the range of values, divided into equal subunits,
and the other is the frequency of data values in those ranges.

Example 5:
Use the student exam score data above to
create a histogram.

What is a scatterplot?
A scatterplot compares two quantitative values simultaneously. On a two-dimensional
graph, the x-axis axis is labeled with one variable, and the y-axis is labeled with the other.
Example 6:
Create a scatterplot
comparing the
variables “mpg” and
“weight.”

Notice that each dot

represents one car.