The test will generally use the kinds of bar, line, or circle graphs that you
might see in a textbook, at lectures in a college course, or in a magazine like Bar,
Line, and Circle Graphs Quarterly. They are never fancy or obscure. Sometimes
a graphic might look unusual at first, but the unusual-looking ones are often
easier to interpret as long as you don’t get flustered. However they might try to
fancy it up, these graphs always get back to one of two things:
- distributions
- variable relationships
These sound like the kinds of words you might say while pushing your
glasses up on the bridge of your nose, but really they are basic concepts. Even
the nonspectacled can understand them.
But can the nonspectacled understand the utter pain of not being able to read the menu at Panera?? I didn’t think so.
—Samantha
Distributions
A distribution illustrates how much of something exists in varying places or
conditions, or how much there is of one thing compared to other things.
Does that sound too abstract? Well, let’s look at an example that charts one
misguided young woman’s attempt to woo her crush via texting.
The following is a text retrieved from a cell phone found in the hallway of a
high school in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Hey Johnny
I think ur really cute
I made this bar graph that compares your hotness to the average hotness of guys in our
school, county, and state