Video Transcript
The table shows information about the number of fruits in a bowl. There are seven apples, four oranges, 10 bananas, and two pears. Draw a bar graph to represent this information.
Our first step when drawing any bar graph is to ensure that we label our axes correctly. The topic — in this case the type of fruit — must go on the 𝑥-axis. The frequency — in this case the number of fruit — must go on the 𝑦-axis. As the highest frequency in the table is 10, we need to ensure that our 𝑦-axis goes up to at least 10. The numbers on the 𝑦-axis must be spaced equally and you could go up in either ones or twos. We need to make sure this is consistent for the whole scale. In this case, we’ve counted up in twos, zero, two, four, six, eight, and 10.
As we’re dealing with discrete data, we tend to leave a gap between each of the bars. We must ensure that this gap is equal. There were seven apples in the bowl. Therefore, our first bar needs to go up to seven. This is halfway between the six and eight that are marked on the 𝑦-axis. There were four oranges in the bowl. Therefore, our second bar needs to go up to four. There were 10 bananas in the bowl. Therefore, this third bar needs to go up to 10. Finally, there were two pears in the bowl. So the fourth bar has to go up to two.
Notice that each of our four bars are the same width and they have the same gap between them. You can draw your bar graph horizontally although usually we draw it vertically with frequency on the 𝑦-axis.
