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Math 5: The Ups and Downs of Bar Graphs 30 Views
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Description:
As much as we'd like them to be, bar graphs are very rarely perfect. They are supposed to reflect life, after all.
Transcript
- 00:12
When it comes to bar graphs you might be used to two familiar shapes
- 00:15
[image of a bar and a line graph] either this or this they have the familiar shape of a staircase and just
- 00:19
like a staircase they're easy to use okay easy to use for most of us how
- 00:23
are you failing at using a staircase you just climbed up nevermind so like a
- 00:28
staircase you can see upward or downward trends in a flash however it turns out [upward and downward trends of a bar chart]
Full Transcript
- 00:32
that there are all sorts of bar graphs that don't follow this familiar staircase
- 00:35
form they might be different from their more stare like brethren but we can [bar graph images in a living room]
- 00:39
still use them to learn all sorts of useful information just be sure not to
- 00:43
use them as a set of blueprints for a staircase unless you like twisting your [man hopping from one bar chart block to another]
- 00:46
ankle every time you want to go to another floor so let's take a look at
- 00:50
these three bar graphs that represent five-year projections just by looking at
- 00:54
this first one we can tell that profits will be going up over the five years [people smiling by an upward trending bar chart]
- 00:57
because each bar gets taller and taller similarly just by looking at the second
- 01:01
one we can tell that profits will be going down over the next five years
- 01:04
since each bar gets shorter and shorter the third one on the other hand doesn't [man with a microphone explaining a up and down bar chart projection]
- 01:08
really fit into either of these scenarios since different bars sitting next to
- 01:12
each other are sometimes taller and sometimes shorter so we can't draw a
- 01:16
nice clean arrow to show a trend does that mean the graphs broken and we need to [confused man in a suit with a downward trending bar chart]
- 01:20
smack it like an old TV set until it gives us the kind of arrow we're looking
- 01:23
for nope the lack of a nice clean arrow is actually the information we want the
- 01:27
fact that there's no clear trend means that this company is having some ups and [men in suits pondering about the company's profits]
- 01:31
downs it might be nice if profits were just going up but it's not your bar
- 01:35
graphs fault that sales of your edible bicycles aren't going through the roof
- 01:38
we can also use these bar graphs to get detailed information take a look at this
- 01:42
paragraph for the five-year profit projections of Mike's edible bikes if we [bar chart of a five year profit projections]
- 01:46
compare the bars for year two and your three we see the bar for year three is
- 01:49
a bit taller maybe this is the year that they introduced strawberry flavored seats
- 01:52
sure it'd be an instant success until it starts smelling like butts that is we [strawberries on a motorbike seat]
- 01:56
can use these two bars to calculate just how much profits will change from the
- 02:00
graph we can see that year 2 profits are 240 thousand dollars while years
- 02:05
three profits are three hundred fifty thousand dollars then since the year [bar chart showing profit difference from year 2 to year 3]
- 02:08
three bar is taller than the other two we subtract the year two profits from the
- 02:12
year three profits which shows a profit
- 02:15
increase of 110,000 dollars hopefully this will be enough to weather the [a kid stood beside a green bicycle]
- 02:18
upcoming anchovy flavor tires year spoiler alert they won't be flying off
- 02:22
the shelves
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