(Answer: D)All of these questions ask about distribution. Graphic 1 is about how hotness
is distributed in different regions. Graphic 2 is about how hotness is distributed
among the texter and her rival bachelorettes, and graphic 3 is about how nerds,
jocks, and people who resemble the hot textee are distributed in the school.
Variable Relationships
A variable relationship looks at how much one thing changes as another thing
changes.
The most frequently graphed relationship between variables is change over
time. The most common graphic is the line graph. You’ve seen a million of these
in weather and stock market reports and probably on many of your science tests
at school. Time is most often shown on the horizontal x-axis, and a dependent
variable is most often shown on the vertical y-axis. Together, the two axes show
how the amount of something changes over time. Or how it doesn’t change.
Take, for instance, this useful graph from the U.S. Census Bureau, which tells
you exactly how many seats Wyoming has been allotted in the House of
Representatives across the decades.
Good news—you don’t have to memorize your state’s congressional representation for the SAT. Though it would be easy for youWyomingites (Wyomans? Wyomingians? Wyomes?).
—Samantha
WYOMING’S CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATION, 1880–2000
The graphs on the SAT will show more variation over time than this one (at
least, we sure hope so). Here we present an example with more typical graphs.
WHY YOU SHOULDN’T PROCRASTINATE: A GRAPHICAL
ANALYSIS