2-2 Math - Charts and Graphs

Charts and graphs are everywhere in STEM, and understanding how different kinds of charts and graphs represent data has never been more relevant. New ways to visually represent data are developing all the time, but below are some of the most common and useful charts and graphs. They are categorized by the kind of information they represent with essential vocabulary at the top.

In statistics, distribution compares possibility and reality. In a set of data, distribution includes all possible values and how often each actually appear. Because of this, scatterplots and histograms are often used to show distribution.

This scatterplot shows eruptions of a famous geyser (Old Faithful) in the United States. The scatterplot shows how long each eruption lasts on the horizontal line (x-axis) and how much time is between eruptions on the vertical line (y-axis). By plotting information in this way, it’s possible to see clusters (groups of points) in the data set. In this set for example, long eruption durations appear to be more common if there is a long waiting time between eruptions.