Bar

Graphs
A Bar Graph (also called Bar Chart) is a graphical display of data using bars of different
heights.

Imagine you just did a survey of your friends to find which kind of movie they liked best:

Table: Favorite Type of Movie

Comedy Action Romance Drama SciFi

4 5 6 1 4

We can show that on a bar graph like this:

10
Favorite Type of Movie
8

6
People

0
Comedy Action Romance Drama
SciFi

It is a really good way to show relative sizes: we can see which types of movie are most liked, and
which are least liked, at a glance.
We can use bar graphs to show the relative sizes of many things, such as what type of car people
have, how many customers a shop has on different days and so on.

Example: Nicest Fruit

A survey of 145 people asked them "Which is the nicest fruit?":

Fruit: Apple Orange Banana Kiwifruit Grapes

Blueberry
5
People: 35 30 10 25
40

And here is the bar graph:

40 Nicest Fruit
35
Number of People
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
ple an
ge
na
na it ry pes
Ap Or ifru ber ra
Ba Kiw
Blu
e G

That group of people think Blueberries are the nicest.

Bar Graphs can also be Horizontal, like this:

 Nicest Fruit
Apple
Orange
Banana
Kiwifruit
Blueberry
Grapes

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
Number of People

Example: Student Grades

In a recent test, this many students got these grades:

Grade: A B C D
Students: 4 12 10 2

And here is the bar graph:

 Student Grades
15

10 12

Students
10

0
A B C D
4

You can create graphs like that using our Data Graphs (Bar, Line, Dot, Pie, Histogram) page.
2

Histograms vs Bar
Graphs
Bar Graphs are good when your data is in $500
Bar Graph Histogram
categories (such as "Comedy", "Drama", etc). 50
$400 Gaps 40
No Gaps
But when you have continuous data (such as a $300
30
person's height) then use a Histogram . $200
20

$100
It is best to leave gaps between the bars of a Bar 10

Graph, so it doesn't look like a Histogram. $0

USA India UK NZ Japan
0
100 150 200 250 300 350
Number
Categories Ranges
Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5
Question 6 Question 7 Question 8 Question 9 Question
10

Copyright © 2019 MathsIsFun.com