Drawing & Comparing Bar Graphs

≈ 20 min

To draw a bar graph you: draw and label the two axes, choose a sensible scale, draw one bar per category with equal widths and equal gaps, and give the graph a title.

We will use this data — how learners in a class travel to school:

Way to school	Number of learners
Walk	24
Minibus taxi	16
Car	8
Bicycle	4

The biggest value is $24$ , so a scale of $2$ learners per gridline works neatly — the tallest bar is then $12$ gridlines high.

On a bar graph, the bars should all be…

different widths

the same width

touching with no gaps

drawn without a scale

If each gridline on the scale stands for $2$ learners, how many gridlines tall is the 'Walk' bar of $24$ learners?

You are drawing a bar graph where the largest value is $24$ . Which scale (value per gridline) is the most sensible?

$1$

$2$

$50$

$100$

Using the travel data (Walk $24$ , Minibus taxi $16$ , Car $8$ , Bicycle $4$ ), how many learners were surveyed in total?