Activity 1.1

World Motor Vehicle Production: Bar Graphs and Pie Charts

10 points

Due at the beginning of class, Wednesday, January 28, 2009

You should type your answers to the questions below (unless noted otherwise) and paste tables/charts/graphs in a Microsoft Word document.  Include your name (and your partner's name), print out the document, and submit it together with the other activities on (or before) the due date.

In this activity, you will investigate data and create several different types of graphs to help understand patterns in world motor vehicle production. You will investigate when each type of graph is appropriate for the data. Consider the following data on leading world producers of passenger cars and trucks in 2006 (Source: The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2008).

Location Cars (in thousands) Trucks (in thousands)
U.S.
4,372
6,979
France
2,722
442
Germany
5,399
420
Japan
9,757
1,728
South Korea
3,489
350
Spain
2,079
698
Other
22,536
10,277

1. If you were to create a graph or chart of this data set, what would you like it to show?

2. Explain why a bar graph is appropriate for the car production data?

3. On a separate sheet of paper, draw axes and create a bar graph for the car production data. Be sure to title your graph, label the axes, and show the scales you are using.

4. Explain what your bar graph for the car production data shows which is missing from the table, and explain what your bar graph misses that is shown in the data.

5. If you create a pie chart for the car production data, what will each piece show?

6. Create a table in Excel, and fill in the percentage and fractions for the car data (Excel 2007 instructions below).

Location Cars
(in thousands)		 Percentage Approximate Fraction of the Whole
U.S.
4,372
    
France
2,722
    
Germany
5,399
    
Japan
9,757
    
South Korea
3,489
    
Spain
2,079
    
Other
22,536
    
Total      

7. Use the Excel 2007 instructions below to find a rough approximate fraction of the whole for each row.

8. On a separate sheet of paper, create a pie chart using the above fractions of the car production data.

9. On a separate sheet of paper, create a bar graph using the truck production data.

10. For what types of data is a bar graph appropriate, and for what types of data is a pie chart appropriate?

Summary
In this activity, you learned how to use Excel to find percentages. You gained experience in deciding when a bar graph or a pie chart is appropriate to represent data and in creating bar graphs and pie charts. You also practiced how to “read” and explain information from bar graphs and pie charts.