How to Choose an Appropriate Display to Represent Data

In this lesson, let’s learn how to use an appropriate display, which mean do we use a circle graph, line graph, a bar graph, a histogram, etc. for each of the situations given below.

First one, number of cell phone subscribers from 1995 to 2003. What we’re trying to do is show a number and how it changes. We just want to show change to a number. Best way to do that is a line graph. Line graph is ideal to show how values change year over year or from period of time to the other. Easy way to compare, right? So line graph’s the best way to do it.

Points scored by individual members of a basketball team compared to the whole team. In this case, we are trying to show how one person did with respect to the whole team. A circle graph is the best way to show it, this is also called a pie chart. Why? Because this is the whole team’s score, this is what person one scored, this is what person two scored, person three, four and five. All their total scores, individual scores end up being the total score of the team. So if you want to show how you compare, right? To add to total that compare to total, then a circle graph is a better way of doing it, so the third one.

The number of species of each butterfly family they saw. Number of species of each butterfly family. Well, in this case, a bar graph maybe a good option because what am I trying to do? I'm going to show you each family A, B, C, D and I’m going to show you a number that I saw. You’re going to compare the heights of each one of these. It’s four different data sets, right? So the best way to show it is show the values seven, ten, five, four. So bar graph is the answer.

Here’s a quite cheat sheet on what to use. A Bar Graph, if you want to show the number of items and categories. Circle Graph compares parts of the data to the whole. Line Graph shows change over a period of time, the history we saw. Histogram is used to show the frequency of data. Line Plot shows how many times each number occurs in a data. How many times did the particular thing happen. Stem-And-Leaf Plot shows you everything individual value. And Box and Whisker Plot shows how the distribution of the data happens. What is the concentration, how does it spread.