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Bar Charts

Bar Charts


A bar chart is used to display data visually. The height of each rectangular bar shows the frequency of each category.


Here is a bar chart showing the colours of cars in a car park:

bar charts 1

The different colours are shown on the horizontal axis and the frequency is shown by the height of each bar.


Example 1: Here is a bar chart showing the number of goals scored by a football team in some matches.

bar charts 2

a) In how many games did the team score 1 goal?
b) How many games did the team play?


a) The bar for 1 goal goes up to 8, the team scored 1 goal in 8 games

b) To find the number of games played we need to add up all of the frequencies
The team scored 0 goals in 7 games, 1 goal in 8 games, 2 goals in 5 games and 3 goals in 3 games.
7 + 8 + 5 + 3 = 23 games


We can use a dual bar chart (double bar chart) when we can split the categories into groups

Here is a table showing the favourite biscuit of some students:

BourbonsChocolate DigestivesShortbread
Boys497
Girls3710

We can show this data on a dual bar chart

bar charts 3

Each category (each biscuit) has two bars, one for boys and one for girls.
In a dual bar chart we need a key to show what each of the bars represent.

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Questions

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21 exam-style questions

Practice questions

Question 1

4 marks

Here is a bar chart showing the average maximum monthly temperature (∘C^{\circ}\text{C}∘C) in Greenwich.

MonthTemperature (∘C^{\circ}\text{C}∘C)
Jan8
Feb9
Mar12
Apr15
May18
Jun21
Jul23
Aug23
Sep20
Oct
Nov
Dec

Here are the average monthly temperatures in October, November and December.

MonthTemperature
October16∘C16^{\circ}\text{C}16∘C
November11∘C11^{\circ}\text{C}11∘C
December8∘C8^{\circ}\text{C}8∘C

Flashcards

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24 flashcards

Practice flashcards

A bar chart uses separate bars to compare amounts in different [     ].

Bar Charts Revision Guide

  1. GCSE
  2. /Maths
  3. /Bar Charts

Revision notes for AQA GCSE Maths Bar Charts. Open the guide for explanations and worked examples. Written against the AQA GCSE Maths (8300) specification, so the content matches what's examinable rather than general Maths background.

Practise questions

1 of 3

A bar chart has a vertical axis marked 0,4,8,12,160, 4, 8, 12, 160,4,8,12,16. A bar reaches halfway between 888 and 121212. What frequency does it show?

Practise questions

1 of 2

In a dual bar chart, Class A's bar for Monday has height 999 and Class B's bar has height 141414. How many more does Class B have than Class A?