Excel for Marketing Managers

Demonstrating and Comparing Fractions with Charts

Comparing

Fractions

in Charts

Demonstrating and Comparing Fractions

with Charts

Opportunity...............................................................................................................................

In order to teach math standards, you need to help students to visualize
fractions.

Solution and Overview

Use an Excel pie chart to draw a circle with a fraction of the circle drawn in. A
pie chart is a circle broken up into wedges. Business people typically use pie
charts to show the percentage of sales by product line.

You can use pie charts to represent fractions for your students. In the solution,
you will create a pie chart with two wedges. One wedge will be colored in to
represent the fraction. The other wedge will be formatted to be transparent.

Creating the Solution

1. Enter labels and starting value.
   Start with a blank worksheet. In B1, enter the word “Value” as a heading.
   In A2 and A3, enter the letters A and B.

a. The worksheet will be flexible enough to show any fraction. To begin,

start with 0.25 in cell B2 in order to represent 1/4. Older students may

understand that 1/4 and 25% are the same thing. However, it would be

better if the pie chart could have a label of 1/4.