Just like in a line or bar graph, the title and axes of a table are necessary to tell
the story of this table. Here, we are looking at the number of participants in
Wednesday after-school activities. For example, 15 sophomores are involved in
theater as their Wednesday after-school activity. Can we spot any trends in this
table? For one, we see a decline in participation in every single activity except
contemplation, in which more and more students enroll as they move toward
graduation.
You might see an accompanying problem asking:
If a student is selected at random, what are the odds that he or she will be a
junior and a theater participant?
To answer this type of problem, which is really a type of probability question,
you need to first find the number of junior thespians (12), then divide this by
the total number of students participating in activities (572).
Actors. Junior actors.
—Samantha
I wonder what has the seniors contemplating so much . . .
—SamanthaScatterplots
Scatterplots are frightening graphs because they look at first like a chaos of data
points. On the following two graphs, we see that the x-axis tells us a student’s
SAT score, and the y-axis tells us the number of hours they studied. Bob, for
instance, studied about 75 hours and got a little more than 1300. Sounds fair. But
Jermaine studied for less than 50 hours and got a perfect 1600, while poor
Hildegard studied for 250 hours and got a 1200. Hildegard, you need to read Up
Your Score!