A column graph is a graph used to display data about different groups. There are all different types of groups that can be looked at. For example the number of different types of bugs in a garden, the number of people with certain eye colours in a class or even the flavours of juice people prefer.

Let's look now at how to create and interpret (understand) column graphs.

Creating a column graph

Let's say I looked in my garden and I found $6$6 ants, $5$5 worms, $3$3 caterpillars, $1$1 butterfly and $4$4 bees. Watch this video to see how we'd turn this into a column graph.

Interpreting a column graph

So what information can we get from a column graph? Let's watch another video and see.

Remember!

Give your graph a heading.
Label both axes (arms) of the graph.
Make sure the columns are equal widths and equally spaced.
Make sure that the height of the column matches the frequency (how often that score occurred).

Worked Examples

Question 1

The table below shows the house points earned by four colour houses at their swimming carnival.

House	Points
$Blue$	$60$60
$Green$	$20$20
$Yellow$	$70$70
$Orange$	$60$60

Complete the graph using the information from the table.

Question 2

The fish shop has $5$5 tanks.

The graph below shows the number of fish in the $5$5 tanks.

Turn this information into a scaled bar graph.

Question 3

A dice is rolled and the number of times it landed on the digits 1-6 is recorded in the table below.

Dice Number	Number of Rolls
1	$6$6
2	$4$4
3	$1$1
4	$8$8
5	$5$5
6	$7$7

Complete the graph using the information from the table.
What was the most frequent dice roll?
3
A
6
B
4
C
5
D
1
E
2
F
How many more 4's were rolled than 2's?
What was the least frequent dice roll?
3
A
1
B
5
C
2
D
6
E
4
F

Outcomes

S2-1

Conduct investigations using the statistical enquiry cycle:– posing and answering questions; – gathering, sorting, and displaying category and whole-number data; – communicating findings based on the data.

Create and Interpret Column Graphs I