Charts and Graphs

All spreadsheet programs have a variety of graphing and charting tools. which allow you to specify a set of values in the spreadsheet and draw a pie chart, bar chart, line chart, or a combination of chart types, including 3-dimensional charts. The chart can then be inserted, as an information clip, into a word-processed document or PowerPoint presentation. The seemingly simple choice of chart style is a thinking decision—What do I want to display? What does my data really mean? Students charting pH variation in a guppy tank learn quickly, for example, that a range of 1-10 is meaningless. They then need to ask: What is pH anyway and what do these numbers mean? The same students counting guppies and snails will observe that using a line chart allows them to have 7.5 guppies on a Sunday. Is this an accurate presentation of the data? How could there have been half of a guppy in the tank? The teacher guiding this type of learning is not delivering information; she is exciting curiosity and encouraging thinking. Types of Charts/Graphs The most common forms of charts used in schools are the line, the bar and the pie chart. A line graph is a good way to look at how something changes and usually involves some form of measurement; time, size, mass, weight, distance, space, or cost. An example might be the number of minutes spent working on homework every day for a week. Bar graphs are great for looking at similarities and differences among several related or similar elements. An example here might be the amount of time spent by 5 different students on practicing the piano. A pie graph allows students to compare parts of the whole with each other, or the fraction of the whole each part takes up. An example here could be the amount of time one student spends on specific activities in one 8 hour period. Chart Wizard The chart wizard will allow you to generate charts and graphs automatically from the data stored within a spreadsheet file. It will not, however, tell you which type of chart is the best to depict the information you wish to share. This is another way to have students engage in higher order thinking skills.