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Bar graphs review

Bar graphs are a nice way to visualize categorical data. This article reviews how to create and read bar graphs.
A bar graph is a nice way to display categorical data.
For example, imagine a P.E. teacher has 4 soccer balls, 4 footballs, 7 tennis balls, and 8 volleyballs. We can display this data in a bar graph:
A bar graph shows the vertical axis labeled Number of balls. The horizontal axis is labeled, from left to right: Soccer, Football, Tennis, and Volleyball. The vertical axis is labeled from the bottom of the axis to the top of the axis as follows: 0, 2, 4, 6, and 8. The bar line for each type of book shows the following: Soccer bar line extends to 4, Football bar line extends to 4, Tennnis bar line extends to 7, and Volleyball bar line extends to 8.
Notice how the height of the bar above "soccer" is 4 units to show that there are 4 soccer balls. And the bar above "tennis" is 7 units high to show that there are 7 tennis balls. The "football" and "volleyball" bars work in the same way.
Want to learn more about bar graphs? Check out this video.

Practice set 1: making bar graphs

Problem 1.A
There are 4 purple, 5 yellow, 2 green, and 9 red lunch boxes.
Make a bar graph for this data.

Want to practice more problems like these? Check out this exercise.

Practice set 2: reading bar graph

Problem 2.A
The music store sells trumpets, flutes, and drums.
This bar graph shows how many of each instrument are at the store.
A bar graph shows the vertical axis labeled Number of instruments. The horizontal axis is labeled, from left to right: Trumpet, Flute, and Drum. The vertical axis is labeled from the bottom of the axis to the top of the axis as follows: 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, and 14. The bar line for each type of book shows the following: Trumpet bar line extends to 11, Flute bar line extends to 4, and Drum bar line extends to 14.
How many more trumpets are there than flutes?
  • Your answer should be
  • an integer, like 6
  • an exact decimal, like 0.75
  • a simplified proper fraction, like 3/5
  • a simplified improper fraction, like 7/4
  • a mixed number, like 1 3/4
more trumpets

Want to practice more problems like these? Check out this exercise and this more advanced exercise.

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