Just hearing your classmates say which fruits they like, one at a time, makes it hard to tell which fruit is the most popular. "Someone said apple, someone said banana..." — it gets confusing fast.
But what if you lined up a picture for every vote and counted them? You'd see right away which fruit got the most votes. Showing data with pictures or symbols like this is called a "picture graph" (or pictogram).
The key ideas behind a picture graph are "sorting" and "counting." First, sort the data into categories (apple or banana). Then count how many are in each category.
Line up that many pictures, and you're done. This process is really the very first step of statistics.
A picture graph is like a cousin of the bar graph. A bar graph draws a bar whose height matches a number. A picture graph lines up that many pictures instead (apple pictures, star pictures, and so on).
Being able to count each individual picture makes it easier for kids to understand. Later on, you'll learn that one picture can stand for "5 people" or "10 people" instead of just "1 person" — and from there, you naturally move into the world of bar graphs.
Picture graphs come up all the time in real life. At school, whenever you do an activity like "survey our class's favorite season," you almost always end up making a picture graph or a table. The "count it and show it as a picture" skill you learn early on is a basic building block you'll keep using for organizing much more complicated data later.
The most fun way to practice with your child is to run an actual survey. Ask about something your child is genuinely curious about, like "what's our family's favorite ice cream flavor?" or "what animal do your friends like best?" Have them draw one picture at a time on paper as they count.
Once you've finished counting, ask questions like: "Which one has the most?" "Which one has the fewest?" "What's the second most?"
On our activity page, you can click fruit buttons and watch the picture graph build up in real time. Use the "ask 10 friends at once" button to quickly generate lots of data, and find which fruit is the most popular right there on the graph.