There's a saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. This definitely applies to graphs. A graph is a picture of the data you collected. Look at the data. It's not real pretty is it? Our task is to turn the data into a piece of art (or at least a colorful picture) that will be easy to see the information.

Different Kinds of Graphs
What kind of graph you use will depend on what kind of data you collected. Pie graphs are great for displaying parts of a whole like how many students of a class like a particular sport. Line graphs (histograms) tell the story of your data over a period of time. For instance, line graphs are good for showing how sales change month-to-month or year-to-year in your favorite ice cream parlor.

Line plots are a way to show results of surveys or a class' grades. Bar graphs are another way to display data survey results or other data that show how many of something. Many of the activities here rely on bar graphs.