he table shows the rainfall, in inches, in the month of July for the years 2006 through 2011.
Year
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
Rainfall
4.5
4.4
4.1
4.2
3.9
4.0
Alex used the data to make the graph below.
A line graph representing the data in the table is shown.A line graph is titled July Rainfall.
The horizontal axis is labeled Year and is equally spaced. The axis scale starts at 2006 increases by 1 until ending at 2011.
The vertical axis is labeled Rainfall in inches and is equally spaced. The axis scale starts at 3.6 and increases by 0.1 until ending at 4.6.
The data points represented in the tabled are connected by line segments from left to right.
a) In what way could the graph be misleading?
b) How could you redraw the graph so that it is less misleading?
a) The graph could be misleading because the vertical axis starts at a value greater than 0, giving the impression that there was no rainfall in years where the line is below the axis. Additionally, the evenly spaced intervals on the vertical axis may exaggerate small differences between the values.
b) To make the graph less misleading, the vertical axis should start at 0 and have a larger interval size. This would accurately represent the absence of rainfall in certain years and reduce the visual impact of small differences between the values. Additionally, the line segments connecting the data points could be made thinner or removed altogether to avoid giving the impression of exact values where there are none.
a) The graph could be misleading because it does not clearly show the actual values of the rainfall for each year. The vertical axis starts at 3.6 and ends at 4.6, which could make the differences in rainfall amounts seem smaller than they actually are.
b) To redraw the graph to make it less misleading, you could adjust the vertical axis scale to include the actual values of rainfall. For example, you could start the scale at 3.9 (the lowest rainfall value) and end at 4.5 (the highest rainfall value). This will better represent the differences between the rainfall amounts for each year.