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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.

Language:
English Language

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]

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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