Pictographs

Pictographs are a fun way to display data using pictures.

Each picture is used to represent a certain number of things.

There should be a key at the bottom of the pictograph telling you how many things each picture represents.

Example: Penguin Count

There's an island at the opening to Port Stephens where little penguins roost. Sam and Al were really interested in the penguins and decided to keep track of how many penguins they saw during their monthly visits over five months. They displayed their results using a pictograph:

The key at the bottom of the pictograph tells you that they've used a whole penguin to stand for \(10\) penguins and a half penguin to stand for \(5\) penguins.

So, the pictograph shows that they saw

• \(30\) penguins in January
• \(45\) penguins in February
• \(40\) penguins in March
• \(30\) penguins in April
• \(15\) penguins in May

Pictographs are an interesting way to display data, and they're fun to draw up, but they might not be able to small differences in data. For example, what if Sam and Al had seen \(41\) penguins in March? How would they show their additional penguin on their pictograph?

Example:Favourite Vegetables

You can also draw pictographs horizontally, like the one in the picture below. This time, Jasmin decided to survey her class mates to find out what their favourite vegetables were. She displayed her results in a pictograph. Yes, Jasmin's favourite vegetable really is broccoli!

The key at the bottom of the pictograph shows that she used one whole broccoli to stand for four people liking a vegetable, a half head of broccoli to stand for two people liking a vegetable and one quarter of a head of broccoli to stand for \(1\) person liking a vegetable.

The pictograph shows that

• \(12\) people liked potatoes best.
• \(14\) people liked carrots best.
• \(9\) people liked beans best.
• \(18\) people liked corn best.
• \(1\) person liked broccoli best.

I wonder who the one person who liked broccoli the best was!

Conclusion

It's lots of fun to draw pictographs. Why don't you try drawing some yourself? Don't forget to put a key at the bottom. For example, you might draw pictographs to show

• How many hours you spend watching television each week.
• How many runs your cricket team makes.
• How long it takes you to get to school each day.
• How many dogs you see while you are travelling to school.

Think of something you feel like investigating, and have fun drawing pictographs!