Which of the following graphs would be best to use to display the number of discharges by medical service for the past year?
Line or bar graph?
To determine which graph is best to display the number of discharges by medical service for the past year, let's consider the characteristics of line and bar graphs:
1. Line graph: A line graph is suitable for showing trends over time. It uses a line to connect data points and is often used to display continuous data. Each point on the line represents a particular time period, allowing for easy identification of patterns and changes.
2. Bar graph: A bar graph is effective for comparing categories or discrete data. It uses rectangles (bars) of different lengths to represent each category and their corresponding values. Bar graphs are useful for presenting data that is not continuous and require a visual comparison between different categories.
Based on this information, the best graph to display the number of discharges by medical service for the past year would be a bar graph. Since medical services are likely to be discrete categories (such as cardiology, orthopedics, pediatrics, etc.), a bar graph will provide a clear visual representation of the number of discharges for each service. The length of the bars will easily facilitate comparisons between different medical services.