preview

The Three Most Common Ways to Displaying Data Essay

Decent Essays

While accumulating data is essential to interpreting progress and making progress in future ventures, the ability to display data is critical. Displaying data allows for a superior understanding of the information. The three most common ways to visually display data is through the use of pie charts, bar charts, and line graphs. Pie charts are best used when comparing parts of a whole (Data Driven Decisions). A disadvantage of using a pie chart is that one will not be able to see changes over time. If one is trying to best track changes over time bar charts and line graphs will be used. When smaller changes exist, line graphs are better to use than bar graphs. Line graphs can also be used to compare changes over the same period of …show more content…

In the chart below, parents will quickly be able to determine how many employees have four years or more college education as compared to the whole facility. In addition to the previous data displays, we can also use line graphs to display information such as test score frequency. Parents, students, and teachers will be best served to test score data by viewing a line graph. This visual display will allow the audience to view small and quick changes over time. The line graph below shows these small and quick changes by looking at the frequency of two different test scores over the period of a week. The final key data display is a bar chart. Like the aforementioned line graph, a bar chat is best utilized to show changes over time. However the major difference between a line graph and a bar chart is that the later is exploited to illustrate larger and longer changes over time. Information such as attendance from the past three months over the previous three years would be best exhibited in a bar chart. Students, parents, and principals would be able to quickly decipher the data in the bar chart. In summation, there are three major ways to display data. Pie graphs are excellent displays when demonstrating parts of a whole. Furthermore line charts are exceptional visual representations of small and short changes over time. Finally, bar graphs are perfect for displaying larger

Get Access