Building Your Own Graph from Data You Collected Yourself

Think about where you have seen this before. Anyone who reports numbers, from a nurse to a farmer, must present them so others can understand them. This is worth learning because a graph that cannot be understood does not communicate anything.

Watch for it today, and when you spot it, tell someone what you noticed and how you knew. Ask yourself where else the same idea might be hiding, then go and look.

Take a deep breath and look at this. Now build one. Take your tally chart and turn it into a bar graph. Give the graph a title so anyone knows what it is about. Label each bar with its category and make each bar as tall as its count.

Keep the bars the same width and evenly spaced, so tall does not fool the eye. A neat graph tells the truth quickly. A sloppy one can mislead without meaning to.

Here is a common building error. Bars drawn at different widths make some categories look larger than they are. Keep every bar the same width so height alone carries the meaning. When you get it right, say thank You to God, who gave you that thinking mind.