Pictorial Representation of Data

It is easy to put your data into every diagram you know of, and end up with a bar chart, pie chart, stem and leaf diagram, frequency polygon and pictogram, but what information would each one give? Pie charts are good at showing the proportion of each category, but they don’t easily show the actual numbers involved.

Bar charts are good if there are lots of categories. Frequency diagrams and polygons work well with numerical data, as do stem and leaf diagrams, but not pictograms. There are other ways to represent data, each with their good and bad points.

Have a look at how data is presented in the media. Do they follow the guidelines of good practice in their diagrams, or can you see room for improvement? Both sides of a debate can take the same data and present it in different ways, such that it supports both sides of the argument! You won’t get caught out if you know how to extract information from the different types of data diagrams.