Math Playground
Activities

Raw Data to Double Graphs

Two categories, one chart — compare boys vs girls, before vs after.

A double bar graph compares two groups side-by-side. Boys vs girls, before vs after, our team vs theirs — same categories, two bars per category.

Edit the data — the chart follows
9Football A6Football B4Tennis A7Tennis B5Swimming A5Swimming B

Building a double bar graph

  • Choose your categories (e.g. favourite sport).
  • Survey two groups with the same question.
  • For each category draw two touching bars, one per group.
  • Add a legend and use one shared y-axis scale.

Using different y-axis scales for the two groups is the classic way to lie about which group is bigger. Same scale, always.

Your turn

Group A: 9 chose football. Group B: 6 did. How much taller is A's bar, as a fraction of B's?

Steps

1) Pick categories (e.g. favourite sport: football, tennis, swimming). 2) Survey two groups. 3) For each category, draw two bars touching: one for each group. 4) Add a legend so the reader knows which colour is which.

Use the SAME y-axis scale for both bars. Different scales lie about which group is bigger.

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