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# Picture graphs (pictographs) review

Picture graphs are a fun way to display data. This article reviews how to create and read picture graphs (also called pictographs).
A picture graph (or pictograph) is similar to a bar graph but way more fun. Here's one that shows how many sheep each shepherd has:
A picture graph where the y axis is labeled number of sheep and the x axis is labeled yuki, cam, justin, and kim. A picture of a sheep equals one sheep. There are four sheep above Yuki. There are two sheep above Cam. There are three sheep above Justing. There are five sheep above Kim.
This works well when we're dealing with small numbers, but what if shepherds had many more sheep?
We could make each sheep picture represent more than one sheep, like this:
A picture graph where the y axis is labeled number of sheep and the x axis is labeled Diane, Girish, and Willy. A picture of a sheep equals five sheep. There are four pictures of sheep above Diane. There are five pictures of sheep above Girish. There is one picture of Willy.
In this picture graph, Diane has 4, times, 5, equals, 20 sheep, Girish has 5, times, 5, equals, 25 sheep, and Willy has just 5 sheep.

## Practice

Problem 1
• Current
StudentNumber of bugs
Jen4
Lee6
Sara5
Create a picture graph of this data.

Want more practice like this? Check out this exercise and this more advanced exercise.

## Want to join the conversation?

• Sir, what is the real life application of finding mean, median, mode, range?
(or) why we have to find mean, median, mode, range?
• There are many applications of such things. As an adult, one must buy various items; at which point they may research how to obtain inexpensive yet high-quality goods. In many cases of doing research, ratings are involved. Ratings have a mean, a median, and a mode. Also, when researching variation in most anything, range is a factor along with mean, median, and mode.
• Can the scale have decimal values? For instance can 1 hot dog equals 1.5 hot dogs?
• yes , the scale can have any decimal values. However, you should reasonable scale so that the reading of your chart would be easy ;)
• what if there is 1,234,567,890,123,456,789,012,345,678,901,234,567,899 bugs and you need to graph them?
(1 vote)
• A pictorial graph would not be good in this case
• If all values are unique on a bar chart what will be the mode?
• If all numbers occur only once, there is no mode.
(1 vote)
• Using Charts and Graphs in Social Studies
are being used in what form in percentage
10%
23%
44%
77%
• With graphs like these, wouldn't it mean losing information if the data isn't exactly the value given. Like if I had 11 sheep, each sheep icon represents 5 sheep, and to represent my amount, 2 sheep were put.
(1 vote)
• That's very true. You kind of have to adjust the graph for the data given, e.g. in the case of 11, you could go with 1 sheep = 1 picture.
However, in some cases you could represent half the amount of sheep by slicing the picture in half, which is more visually distinguishable.
(E.g. 1 icon = 2 sheep -> 5 and 1/2 icons represent 11 sheep.)
(1 vote)
• Each medical intern was asked to chart how many patients per day each day of the week. By the end of the week, they had a chart to show which days were busiest.