Bar graphs and pie charts

Bar graphs and pie charts are two of the simplest ways to summarize and
represent data. In general, a bar graph, also called a bar chart, usually
looks something like this:

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15

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0
Europe North America Asia Australia South America

And a pie chart usually looks something like this:

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 1
2

16
6

Europe
North America
Asia
Australia
South America

In this lesson, we’ll start with data tables like the ones we looked at in the
last lesson, and try to represent the data given in the tables in bar graphs
and pie charts.

Building data tables

Let’s say we’re given historical information about the host cities for the
summer Olympic games, and we want to summarize this information into a
simple data table.

Here is a list of host cities for the summer games, not including host cities
for canceled games, from 1896 through 2016.

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Games Year City, Country Continent

I 1896 Athens, Greece Europe

II 1900 Paris, France Europe
III 1904 St. Louis, United States North America
IV 1908 London, United Kingdom Europe
V 1912 Stockholm, Sweden Europe
VII 1920 Antwerp, Belgium Europe
VIII 1924 Paris, France Europe
IX 1928 Amsterdam, Netherlands Europe
X 1932 Los Angeles, United States North America
XI 1936 Berlin, Germany Europe
XIV 1948 London, United Kingdom Europe
XV 1952 Helsinki, Finland Europe
XVI 1956 Melbourne, Australia Australia
XVII 1960 Rome, Italy Europe
XVIII 1964 Tokyo, Japan Asia
XIX 1968 Mexico City, Mexico North America
XX 1972 Munich, West Germany Europe
XXI 1976 Montreal, Canada North America
XXII 1980 Moscow, Soviet Union Europe
XXIII 1984 Los Angeles, United States North America
XXIV 1988 Seoul, South Korea Asia
XXV 1992 Barcelona, Spain Europe
XXVI 1996 Atlanta, United States North America
XXVII 2000 Sydney, Australia Australia
XXVIII 2004 Athens, Greece Europe
XXIX 2008 Beijing, China Asia
XXX 2012 London, United Kingdom Europe
XXXI 2016 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil South America

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If we wanted to make a data table showing the number of times each
continent has hosted to summer games, we could count this number for
each continent from the data table, and create a summary table for count
by continent:

Continent Count

Europe 16

North America 6

Asia 3

Australia 2

South America 1

The summary table is often called a frequency table, which shows the
frequency or count of each individual. In the list of host cities of summer
games, the individual, Europe, appeared 16 times, which is why the count,
or frequency is 16.

Building bar graphs

If we wanted to express the count of summer games by continent in a bar
graph, it might look like this:

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Europe North America Asia Australia South America

Notice that we have a list of the continents across the bottom of the bar
graph, with the count of the number of times they’ve hosted the summer
games up the left side. The continents are the individuals, and the count is
a quantitative variable, because the count is a numeric property of each
of the individuals.

The bar graph is a nice way to represent this data, because we can quickly
get a visual picture of which continents have hosted the summer games
most often.

Now we can quickly see that Europe has hosted more summer games by
far than any other continent, North America has hosted the second-most
number, and South America has hosted the summer games the fewest
number of times. With this particular data set, since we know there are 7
continents, we could infer from the graph that Africa and Antarctica have
never hosted the summer games.

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Bar graphs can also be built horizontally.

Europe

North America

Asia

Australia

South America

0 5 10 15 20

When we build a vertical bar graph, it’s common to sort the data largest to
smallest, so that the tallest bars appear on the left, in descending order
down to the smallest bars on the right. When we build a horizontal bar
graph, it’s common to put the largest bars at the top and the smallest bars
at the bottom.

Reading bar graphs

If we only have the bar graph, and no data table to work with, we may
only be able to get approximate values from the bar graph. Using this bar
graph again,

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 20

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Europe North America Asia Australia South America

we see that the vertical axis isn’t marked off at every increment, only at
every increment of 5. So based on how far up the bar extends for Europe,
for example, we only know with absolute certainty that Europe has hosted
between 15 and 20 times. We could probably guess that they’ve hosted
about 16 or 17 summer games, but we might not feel absolutely sure.

At quick glance we would know that Australia has probably hosted only 2
or 3 times.

It’s worth making the point that bar graphs aren’t always great at
expressing exact values, but they’re excellent at giving us a quick visual
picture of data.

Building pie charts

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This same data can be displayed in a pie chart. It’s helpful in a pie chart,
though not necessary, to make each individual a different color so that it’s
easy to see the distinction between sections.

Like the bar graphs, it’s customary to put the largest slices next to each
other, in order all the way down to the smallest sections.

1
2

16
6

Europe
North America
Asia
Australia
South America

Example

Create a bar graph and pie chart that shows the number of times each
continent has hosted the winter Olympic games. Use the data table to first
create a summary table, then build the bar graph and pie chart.

Host cities for the winter Olympic games, not including host cities for
canceled games, from 1924 through 2018

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 Games Year City, Country Continent

I 1924 Chamonix, France Europe

II 1928 St. Moritz, Switzerland Europe
III 1932 Lake Placid, United States North America
IV 1936 Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany Europe
V 1948 St. Moritz, Switzerland Europe
VI 1952 Oslo, Norway Europe
VII 1956 Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy Europe
VIII 1960 Squaw Valley, United States North America
IX 1964 Innsbruck, Austria Europe
X 1968 Grenoble, France Europe
XI 1972 Sapporo, Japan Asia
XII 1976 Innsbruck, Austria Europe
XIII 1980 Lake Placid, United States North America
XIV 1984 Sarajevo, Yugoslavia Europe
XV 1988 Calgary, Canada North America
XVI 1992 Albertville, France Europe
XVII 1994 Lillehammer, Norway Europe
XVIII 1998 Nagano, Japan Asia
XIX 2002 Salt Lake City, United States North America
XX 2006 Turin, Italy Europe
XXI 2010 Vancouver, Canada North America
XXII 2014 Sochi, Russia Europe
XXIII 2018 Pyeongchang, South Korea Asia

If we try to make a frequency table first of this information, we get

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 Continent Count

Europe 14

North America 6

Asia 3

Then we can make a bar graph,

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Europe North America Asia

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or a pie chart.

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Europe
North America
Asia

Bar graphs are also great for showing multiple variables for the same
individuals, side by side. Now that we’ve created bar graphs for host
continents for both the summer and winter Olympic games, let’s bring
them together:

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Europe North America Asia Australia South America

Summer games Winter games

This kind of side-by-side bar graph allows us to quickly see what we

already knew from the previous bar graphs, like the fact that Europe has
hosted more summer games and more winter games than any other
continent.

But we get more information from this, too, like the fact that Europe has
hosted more summer games than it has winter games, or that North
America has hosted an equal number of summer and winter games.

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